Now fully assembled, the PACE spacecraft nears completion of its final environmental tests at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
These tests ensure the spacecraft can survive the rigors of launch and orbit early next year.
The spacecraft and instruments are all together assembled in this chamber behind me,
and we are blasting them with acoustic energy
to look at the response of the different parts of the observatory
and make sure nothing gets damaged.
And the reason we do this is to simulate the launch environment
for the vibration in the acoustic range during launch.
Today
the full level that we get up to is almost 140 decibels, which is very loud.
It would definitely damage your hearing.
It's like the same kind of noise you'd hear if you're close to an airplane
with a jet engine or a very loud rock concert near the speakers.
For years, I've been witnessing tests in this chamber for various missions,
and I always see the large speakers in there,
and they're shaped like cones, which remind me of bells of brass instruments.
And so I thought, you know, what could we do to have
a group of musicians play and see if they could equal the sound
that we simulate during one of our launch acoustics tests.
[”Also Sprach Zarathustra” plays]
The Marine Band didn’t quite match the same sound levels PACE withstood, but made a different lasting impression...
The musicians composed a fanfare for PACE’s journey.
[loud drum hit followed by a swell of orchestral music]