Making Music From NASA's Sound Archives

Published February 6, 2015 at 1:45 PM EST

Liftoff of the Apollo 17 Saturn V Moon Rocket from Pad A, Launch Complex 39, Kennedy Space Center, Florida, at 12:33 a.m., December 7, 1972. (NASA Flickr Commons)

NASA has taken years of sound from its historic space flights and probe missions and put it online. All the sound is free on SoundCloud, and you can use it for whatever you want. That gave two musicians a brilliant idea.

While working on a soundtrack for a documentary about aliens, musicians Davide Cairo and Giacomo Muzzacato stumbled upon NASA’s massive sound library. While some people may hear bleeps and bloops and mechanical gears, with a little remixing, they heard music.

Cairo and Muzzacato followed NASA’s lead and released an EP of these remixes free online. The beat-heavy ode to space is called 80UA.

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