'SATELLITES'

Being the astronomy geek that I am, I wanted to do an album inspired by the moons of our solar system (sort of an answer to Holst's "Planet Suite"). They're endlessly fascinating - much more so than the planets they orbit, because these natural satellites have the potential to harbour some form of life, even if that life is at a microbial level (or, as is possibly/theoretically the case under the ice of both Enceladus and Europa, a more complex form of marine life). 

"Luna"

Luna is the Greek name for what we simply know as "The Moon" - when Galileo found some of the Jovian moons and realised that ours wasn't the only one, he named them to avoid any confusion. Ours, though, remained simply "The Moon" for most people.

Luna is a vital part of our world; its gravity brings the tides, its light affects wildlife and the superstition around it rules the life of more than just a few people.

Our exploration of it, though, has made an enormous impact here on Earth. Advances in digital technology and computing are irrevocably bound with the Apollo missions, while a whole host of medical advances are all down to us going there.

The technology behind cooling suits used by the astronauts is now used to ease the suffering of MS sufferers; the need for water recycling led to advances in kidney dialysis; cardiovascular equipment used in gyms today owes its existence to the Apollo missions, as it was used by the astronauts to stay fit; the impact-reducing element of running shoes today is down to Apollo footwear design; insulating materials used in construction, food preservation and life rafts are derived from the materials in the Apollo command module and lunar lander, while the freeze drying of food, fire-retardant clothing and hazardous-gas detection all rely on Apollo research.

Sad, then, that during the coverage of one of the later Apollo landings, one American TV station received complaints that it was replacing re-runs of "I Love Lucy".

After the Apollo 17 mission in 1972, funding was cut for the program, just three years after Armstrong took the first step towards what Kennedy had called "the mastery of space".

I'm forced to wonder what the world would have been like without the vision of JFK...I hope that I've been respectful enough with my editing of his speech for use in the track...and I hope that he likes it, wherever he is. Hope you do, too.

 

"Early Morning Eruption On Enceladus"

Enceladus is a Saturnian moon which has the highest light-reflective properties of all the spheres in the solar system (it has an albedo - or reflective) rating of .9, where 1.0 would be a perfectly reflective body.

I was watching a programme about the Cassini probe which featured one of the scientists involved, Carolyn Porco, scanning Cassini photostreaming back as she started an early shift. One of the photos caught her eye and after some analysis, the white plume on the picture was confirmed as an enormous outpouring of liquid, akin to one of Earth's geysers. The main difference was that these plumes were hundreds of kilometres high.

The photo I've attached to the track shows this. I was working on this track during some very early morning sessions, just as night was turning into day - it fitted perfectly.

"New Moon Hidden In The Rings"

This track is based on what is now regarded as Saturn's 61st moon.

It was spotted by the Cassini probe back in March last year, lurking in the the chunks of ice which make up the planet's G-ring. It's estimated to be a third of a mile across - so tiny that the only way to measure it was to compare it to the known size of another Saturnian moon (Pallene).

I wanted the track to be cold and remote and to give the idea of a small gem, waiting millions of years for us to get the technology together to find it in its hiding place.

 

"Phobos and Deimos"

Phobos and Deimos are Mars' two moons; they're both little more than small asteroids and possibly captured from the asteroid belt because of Jupiter's gravitational peturbation at some point in the past.

These two Martian satellites hurtle around their host planet - unlike our own moon, there's no sedate, monthly orbit for this pair. Phobos completes its orbit in a little over seven hours, with Deimos following at a comparatively leisurely thirty hours.

In Greek mythology, Phobos and Deimos were the sons of Ares, the god of war - Phobos means "fear" and Deimos means "terror"...not much left to the imagination there (add in their sister, Eris - or "strife", which is how the name translates - and you sort of get the picture that the ancient Greeks were trying to paint).

They also drove Ares's chariot and it was this, along with the moons' frenetic speed around Mars, which led to the nature of the track.

"The Sirens Of Titan"

Titan is one of the main points of interest amongst NASA/JPL scientists, mainly because of its ocean and liquid methane. There was a plan recently mooted regarding setting what would essentially be a boat (nothing like a boat you and I would recognise as such and packed to the gunnels with scientific instrumentation, but a boat all the same) adrift on Titan's inhospitable seas.

I loved that idea and the imagery...the track was almost called "Adrift On Titan's Ocean", but it didn't quite cover all the bases for me.

As with many tracks on this album as possible, I'm looking to make mention of the mythology attached to each celestial body. Being a fan of Kurt Vonnegut and his "Sirens Of Titan" being my favourite book, it seemed the ideal way to hook the mythology with the science through a third avenue and lift the title from the book.

A ship's crew rowing furiously across an alien sea with Odysseus lashed to the mast, as extra-terrestrial sirens sing out to wreck the ship on rocks its builders could never dream it would be to asked to avoid. But you might hear something different...anyhow, I hope you like it.

"In Cryogenic Slumbers On Callisto"

Callisto in one of Jupiter's moons, the third largest in the entire solar system and the second largest in the Jovian system (Ganymede being the largest of Jupiter's companions...more about Ganymede later on a forthcoming track).

Composed of mainly rock and ice, it also has traces of silicates and organic compounds and my even have a frozen, subterranean sea down below 100 km from the surface. It has a thin atmosphere of carbon-dioxide and, probably, oxygen molecules.

Callisto orbits Jupiter with the same side facing towards its parent planet, exactly the same way that our moon shows the same face to the Earth. Because this affords the "dark" side a very low radiation level, it has been long-thought that Callisto would be an ideal place for a human base as and when we get around to fulfilling Kennedy's dream of reaching "the very end of the solar system".

Because to do so is a bit like the punch-line from that old Irish joke - it helps, you see, not to start from here. Jupiter (and thus, by association, Calliso) is about 390,000,000 miles from Earth (483,000,000 from the Sun)

At best, that trip would take a couple of years. Starting for the outer rim of the solar system from Callisto would trim all those miles and months off - but the trip to the edge from Callisto would still be a distance of some five BILLION miles.

To save on life-support and the crushing boredom of sitting there watching nothing happen, it's highly likely that the crew of a ship setting out to explore the outer planets would be put into some kind of cryogenic suspension for the majority of the trip.

And, most probably, they'd never come back, due to the travel time, the huge orbits of the outer planets and the simple maths involved. The whole venture would take 20-30 years...add that onto the age of the average astronaut (35-40) and it seems more and more like a one way trip.

So have a listen and sink, if you would, into the cold, long sleep of my imaginary astronaut.

"Final Descent To Triton"

Triton has the triple distinction of being the coldest celestial body in the solar system, of being the largest of Neptune's moons and of being the only moon to have a retrograde orbit (i.e. in the opposite direction to its parent planet's spin).

Covered with a shell of frozen water, frozen carbon dioxide and frozen nitrogen, it reflects back up to 95% of the sunshine that reaches it. The average surface temperature is around  -237 C...that's like Glasgow in January.

Very, very cold.

Triton also has an atmosphere (albeit a very thin one) of nitrogen and is suspected to have a subterranean ocean, like so many of the moons of the outer planets.

I loved the idea of a diving from a sedate orbit into an express-lift final approach to landing on this wasteland of a world...making swift adjustments to avoid the huge water/ammonia plumes from one of its cryo-volcanoes with the huge blue sphere of Neptune, the final proper planet in the system, looming overhead.

Hope you enjoy the ride. 

  "Ice Station Europa"  

Europa - if you're looking in our solar system for extra-terrestial life-forms, that's where the action is, according to the vast swathe of scientific opinion. This moon of Jupiter has a scarred covering of ice over a vast ocean. Due to its proximity to the huge gravitational pull of Jupiter, it's a fair bet that the ocean is warm enough to support life. If the planned mission to land and drill through the ice to the ocean goes ahead in 2020, we'll know for sure.

Arthur C. Clarke made much of this potential for life in his book "2010", where the forces who created humanity in "2001: A Space Odyssey" warn off exploring humans in order to nurture the new life on Europa.

In the book, the joint Russian-American expedition to Jupiter is overtaken by the Chinese, who race ahead of them to Europa with a water-powered ship, with the plan of landing, drilling down, refilling their fuel tanks and then heading home.

They do indeed land on Europa, but their powerful arc-lights attract some enormous, blundering, inquisitive creature from the depths, which smashes through the ice and consigns them all to a remote, icy death.

"Io Flyby" (For Hugh Hopper)

I was going to leave Io out of the album, mainly on the basis that everyone would expect it there as some big, thundering track of Wagnerian proportions, which was not what I wanted 'Satellites' to be about.

But it would have been churlish of me to ignore it - Io is the most volcanic body in the solar system; a violent, restless world of ever changing, hellish landscapes. It's turbulent life is governed by the iron fist of Jupiter's gravity, which churns its inner core and produces endless days and nights of volcanic fury.

So, no...I couldn't leave it out...but I didn't want something akin to "The Ride Of The Valkyries", either.

The Galileo probe made the closest flyby of Io between 1997 and 1999. For all its violence and geological liquidity, there would be no noise, obviously, although there has been some sound recorded of its electro-static discharge...the real music of Io.

So what I decided on was a quiet, introspective, glacially-slow piece, with Galileo, in my mind's eye, sailing sedately past the ever-shifting vista below.

This track is dedicated to the late Hugh Hopper, who lost his battle with leukaemia in 2009. Hugh was an enormously talented musician and was a part of the golden era of my favourite band, Soft Machine. Their album "Third" is my number one album of all time and was a major influence on the 12-year-old me wanting to learn to play an instrument.

Thanks, Hugh.

"Hydra"

Hydra is the outermost natural satellite of the planet Pluto...if one can tolerate Pluto being called a 'planet' - it was downgraded to a minor body in 2006 and is now merely considered part of the Kuiper Belt of objects.

Listen, I've been into astronomy since I was a kid...it's always been a planet to me. Always will be, too.

Discovered only in 2005 (courtesy of the Hubble telecope), Hydra is named after the nine-headed serpent which guarded the waters of the underworld in Greco-Roman mythology. I wanted to make something cool and dark and jazzy for this most distant little moon - given its distance from the sun and its witheringly low temperatures, it was the least I could do.

The track was a challenge in the mastering phase - I sweated long and hard to preserve the gorgeous woody tones of the double bass, as it tended to either be too boomy or simply disappear into the mix completely.

I'm glad I persevered.

Phil

(All photos courtesy of NASA)

All titles composed by Phil Lawton © 2010 shardsofreasonmusic             

             SIC MAGAZINE REVIEW DECEMBER 2010:

http://www.sicmagazine.net/articles/781/shards-of-reason-satellites