Microphone array near rocket crawlerway at Kennedy Space Center, about 1.5 km from the Artemis I launch pad.

A BYU research team captured high-fidelity audio recordings of the launch on Nov.

16 when NASA’s Space Launch System rocket ignited, turning the night sky into day and powering the unmanned Orion crew capsule into space on a mission marking the first step toward putting humans back on the moon and beyond.

The BYU research team of undergraduate and graduate students, led by professors Kent Gee and Grant Hart from the school’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, traveled a long road to complete their multipoint, high-fidelity recording of the Artemis I mission launch from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

BYU researchers from the school’s Department of Physics and Astronomy pose for a photo at Kennedy Space Center with the Space Launch System/Orion crew capsule stack in the background.

The team was there to capture audio recordings of the rocket launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Nov.

And, a 2018 paper from Georgia Institute of Technology researchers noted that “despite the increase of rocket launches in the past years and the commercialization of their operations, little work has been published assessing the community noise impacts from rocket operations.” The authors suggest further work on noise modeling studies would lead to better understanding the potential noise exposure issues for communities located near rocket launch facilities.

But he noted the launch of the world’s most powerful rocket — the SLS produces 8.8 million pounds of maximum thrust, 15% more than the Saturn V rockets that powered Apollo astronauts to the moon — dwarfed the team’s previous work, from a volume perspective.

The BYU researchers captured the launch soundtrack from 14 recording stations in an array around Kennedy Space Center’s launch pad 39B and placed at various distances from the site.

Gee said this is one of the most nerve-wracking aspects of capturing launch audio because recording performance cannot be monitored and success, or failure, isn’t known until long after the rocket has left the ground.

BYU student researcher Taggart Durrant, who has participated in numerous other field recordings, said the in-person experience of the Artemis launch was one-of-a-kind.

And, Durrant noted, the sound energy of rocket launches reach far beyond the experiential.

Gee noted that launch acoustics research has been largely ignored since the end of the Apollo program some 50 years ago, but the growing number and frequency of rocket launches, in the U.S.

assessed a burgeoning global space economy, and associated rocket launch volumes, that are on an accelerated growth arc and particularly so over the past few years.

16 launch of the Artemis I mission from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.

Gee, who also chairs BYU’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, highlighted that the rocket launch acoustics research has been a student-led effort from the start and is producing amazing results while building confidence and skills for a new generation of scientists