Example citation for artistic applications

You have our permission to use or adapt any of these audio files for use in creative or artistic works, but please acknowledge us as the source of the orignial audio. A preferred citation for either commercial or non-commercial works would be:

Original space audio recordings provided courtesy of NASA and The University of Iowa. https://space-audio.org/

Check the details associated with individual audio clips. If you need a shorter version, we suggest:

Original audio from space-audio.org

You can contact us by e-mail if you have questions, plus we would appreciate hearing about any significant creative works utilizing these audio samples.

Scientific interpretation

If you are interested in publishing any scientific analysis or interpretation of the audio files, we invite you to get in-touch with the appropriate researcher here to establish a collaboration and avoid any unfortunate misinterpretations. The spacecraft measurements these were derived from generally are available from standard science archive repositories, such as the the Planetary Data System or the National Space Science Data Center.

Why a license?

A case can be made that these audio clips should be public domain. Generally the data that they were derived from are currently in the public domain and the associated scientific investigations were financed with public money. Unfortunately we have been involved in legal disputes where samples were given to one party which used them unmodified in an artistic creation which was subsequently copyrighted by a commercial organization. The problem occurred when we also provided the same samples to a second party who also used them unmodified in an artistic creation which was discovered by the lawyers from the first party. You can guess where this went. To keep the story short, we thought that requiring the citation would make it less likely for these types of misunderstandings to occur. Note that we're not lawyers, but this just seems reasonable.

This license is recinded if you attempt to claim copyright to our material. If you attempt to claim copyright to our content, you must remove all such content from all of your platforms.