Feeling a close Mercury flyby

This section of BepiColombo Monitoring Camera imagery is set to an audio soundtrack that corresponds to the accelerations experienced by the spacecraft following the closest approach. 

The data was recorded by the Italian Spring Accelerometer (ISA), which can detect the vibrations and the movements of the spacecraft. These detections are not audible to the human ear but have been ‘sonified’, and are presented here alongside the imagery that was captured at the same time. 

The sequence begins after the spacecraft has exited the shadow of the planet, and the general background noise is due to the changes in the spacecraft centre of mass arising from the influx of photons on the spacecraft again, as well as the gravitational pull of the planet. The most distinctive sound is heard at around 00:05 UTC, corresponding to the PHEBUS instrument arriving back in its ‘parking’ position. PHEBUS has a baffle that changes the field of view by rotating around an axis, and when the baffle opens or closes from the parking bracket, it is detected by ISA.

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Credit: Images: ESA/BepiColombo/MTM, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO Audio: ESA/BepiColombo/ISA/ASI-INAF