SCIENCES
NASA's Aluminium Sea Shell
NASA's Aluminium Sea Shell
Aluminium has long been a staple of spaceflight, serving as the building block of the spaceships and satellites which orbit the Earth and the probes that travel much, much farther afield.
11 February, 2016
In a new exhibit commissioned by NASA, aluminium is again being entrusted to help those of us on Earth get a better idea of the space exploration going on above our heads.
The "Orbit Pavilion" installation, created by StudioKCA on commission from NASA, is a giant aluminium sea shell which allows visitors to listen in on a "symphony" of sounds specially chosen to represent both the International Space Station (ISS) and the NASA satellites orbiting Earth at this very moment.
A traveling exhibition, the Pavilion spotlights these spacecraft while the design of the installation harkens back to children putting seashells to their ears to hear the sounds of the ocean. The chambered structure (built in the shape of a nautilus shell) is made up of 3,500 square feet (325 square meters) of water-jet cut aluminium panels. Those panels, which are inscribed with over 100 orbital paths, have been fitted together and attached to a frame created out of aluminium tubes.
A traveling exhibition, the Pavilion spotlights these spacecraft while the design of the installation harkens back to children putting seashells to their ears to hear the sounds of the ocean. The chambered structure (built in the shape of a nautilus shell) is made up of 3,500 square feet (325 square meters) of water-jet cut aluminium panels. Those panels, which are inscribed with over 100 orbital paths, have been fitted together and attached to a frame created out of aluminium tubes.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is one of the stars of the 1,100 square foot (102 square meter) Orbit Pavilion exhibit, which made its debut at the World Science Festival in New York City in May 2015. The "oculus" of the aluminium sea shell, which is 30 inches in diameter, has been turned into a 3D sound chamber by employing a set of speakers programmed to map, translate, and broadcasts (in real time) the sounds of NASA satellites traveling through space around Earth. Thanks to the openings cut into the aluminium siding of the sea shell, exterior noise pollution is mitigated while the 20 different audio sounds being simultaneously produced do not end up garble together. By the same token, the impact of wind on the lightweight structure is reduced.
The Orbit Pavilion is the latest entry in NASA's decades-old efforts to educate, inform, and engage the public on what can oftentimes seem like obscure, inaccessibly complex and technical missions. While NASA's usual approach has been to use the incredible spatial images produced by its equipment, the sea shell allows visitors to step into a more immediate, tangible representation of the space agency's work and come away from a more intimate experience overall. As StudioKCA's Jason Klimoski put it: "[NASA] came to us and said we want to be able to experiences the data and the trajectories. That's a really interesting problem."
The Orbit Pavilion is the latest entry in NASA's decades-old efforts to educate, inform, and engage the public on what can oftentimes seem like obscure, inaccessibly complex and technical missions. While NASA's usual approach has been to use the incredible spatial images produced by its equipment, the sea shell allows visitors to step into a more immediate, tangible representation of the space agency's work and come away from a more intimate experience overall. As StudioKCA's Jason Klimoski put it: "[NASA] came to us and said we want to be able to experiences the data and the trajectories. That's a really interesting problem."
NASA uses a fleet of satellites to observe Earth – its weather patterns, atmosphere, sea levels and ocean currents, winds and storm warnings and freshwater resources. The soundscape changes as the satellites move, enabling us to hear them in real time as their orbits bring them into range hundreds of miles above our heads. The piece uses actual satellite tracking data provided by NASA to determine the orbital location of the sound representing each satellite. The positional data is updated in real time to translate a spacecraft's orbit to a sound trajectory on the 28-channel hemispherical loudspeaker array
StudioKCA's choice of material is itself an homage to the metal that makes spaceflight possible. Beginning with the Sputnik satellite (which launched in 1957), aluminum's extreme durability and lightweight have made it an ideal metal to withstand the pressures and stresses of takeoff, landing, and the extreme temperatures and harsh conditions of deep space. The Apollo spacecraft and the International Space Station both make substantial use of aluminium; the critical advantage of aluminium over steel is that its lighter weight makes it easier to lift objects into orbit.
The ISS uses aluminium for the outer shells of its modules, adding a "bulletproof vest" of Kevlar, ceramic fabrics, and other materials to form a protective blanket against space debris around them.
The single most common material on the ISS is 2219-T6 aluminium alloy; in addition to the outer walls of the ISS modules (whose metal is typically anodized for thermal efficiency and to prevent reactions with oxygen), aluminium Whipple shields absorb the impact of micrometeoroids. While NASA and other space explorers (both public and private) develop constantly evolving spacecraft, they continue to rely on aluminium as a material whose properties are ideally suited to space.