Greenbelt, Md. -- The behemoth acoustic testing chamber doors at Goddard Space Flight Center eased apart slowly like a pair of arms reluctant to hug a stranger.
Behind the doors was a stark white room, seemingly narrow for its soaring height, but perfectly designed to house equipment that will be strapped to a rocket and sent vertically into orbit.
The hatches were indeed being opened to a group of strangers – not scientists, engineers or researchers, but 37 musicians of the United States Marine Band. As the ensemble filed into the chamber, their 19th-century uniforms almost looked alien in the high-tech, state-of-the-art facility.
As musicians took their places, they placed specialized hearing protection over their ears, and sat with eyes on the director, ready to let their instruments rip.
How did the Marine Band end up inside a NASA acoustic chamber? What sounds like the beginning of an odd joke, is actually the product of a creative and unique inter-government agency collaboration.
In the spring of 2023, NASA’s PACE Earth science mission underwent acoustic testing in the very chamber where the Marine Band was sitting. The Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, and ocean Ecosystem (PACE) spacecraft that the engineers were testing had to withstand the magnitude of deafening sound waves that it would experience upon launch into space.
The 6-foot in diameter conical speakers installed in the chamber can produce up to 150 decibels, with sound waves and vibrations ricocheting around the chamber’s concrete walls. PACE was subject to testing up to 138 dB. For reference, standing near a siren can cause ear injury and pain at just 120 dB.
To the PACE team, it came as a relief when their spacecraft passed the testing with flying colors. But curious as scientists and researchers are, they dreamt up another test just for fun: Could musicians match the volume required for testing NASA’s equipment?
To find out, Systems Engineer and amateur trombonist Gary Davis enlisted the help of “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band.
“I’ve been lucky enough to work on several missions here at Goddard, and whenever I saw those giant speakers, I wondered: How loud could I play an instrument if I were in there? How loud could a real band play?” Davis asked.
And so, the Marine Band was called to the Greenbelt, Md., facility armed with instruments and lungs of steel, prepared to force their instruments to fortississimo and beyond.
Col. Jason K. Fettig, director at the time, curated a list of space and ocean themed music, appropriate for the scope of PACE’s mission. He included Also sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss, the themes from Star Wars and Jaws by John Williams and the Space Force’s official song, “Semper Supra.” For fun, Louis Prima’s big band hit “Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing)” was thrown into the mix, as well as Marine Band staples Semper Fidelis and The Stars and Stripes Forever by John Philip Sousa – music that just asks to be played loud.
Unlike a concert hall, which is designed to project a band’s sound out into an audience, the acoustic chamber kept the sound trapped within the space.
During each piece, reverberating soundwaves of the band in the concrete room rattled reeds, shook snares and vibrated valves. It was not a question of if you could feel the music – it was literally buzzing all contents of the enclosure.
“I could feel the vibrations in the instrument,” Clarinetist Gunnery Sgt. Lucia Disano said. “The reed of the instrument vibrates when you play it, which is how it makes the sound, but I could feel my reed vibrating from the other sounds in the chamber.”
It wasn’t necessarily a shocker that the Marine Band couldn’t push out the volume of a Falcon 9 rocket launch, but topping the scales at 119 decibels proved to be a strong showing for this fun experiment.
Individual groups of instruments then had an opportunity to see how they measured up against one another – the low brass blasted out Richard Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” and piccolos touted their solo from The Stars and Stripes Forever. The lone saxophonist who wailed George Michael’s Careless Whisperer won the award for loudest applause from nearby facility staff.
Later in the day, the Marine Band and teams of NASA employees gathered outside the acoustic chamber for a brief concert. This time, with nothing to prove, dynamics were reigned back in from the stratosphere and the musicality of the ensemble returned to normal.
As a special surprise, the band also performed a new piece of music dedicated to the mission during the concert. Just as the Marine Band was over the moon to visit and perform at Goddard Space Flight Center, so too were the NASA staff filled with delight at the première of PACE Fanfare.
“Hearing the director announce an original piece for PACE immediately sent shivers down my spine,” said Natasha Sadoff, applications deputy coordinator for the mission. “But the horns and then full band playing through it nearly brought tears to my eyes – pride in the mission and the PACE team that only music could capture.”
Written by Marine Band arranger Gunnery Sgt. Scott Ninmer, PACE Fanfare grew specifically out of this unique collaboration between the band and NASA.
When Col. Jason K. Fettig broached to Ninmer the opportunity to compose an original work for this occasion, the arranger excitedly agreed. His guidelines were sparse: keep the piece to two minutes maximum, start with a slower, majestic introduction, and transition to a faster, heroic fanfare. Beyond that, he was left to his own devices.
For the arranger, writing a piece for NASA instantly evoked thoughts of outer space and feelings of the great unknown. He quickly began reading up on the scope of the PACE mission, learning about the ways the satellite would provide detailed research into our atmosphere, climate and oceans.
“I find the parallel between this and our Earth’s oceans to be fascinating, as more than 80 percent of the ocean remains unexplored,” Ninmer said. “To me, there is a sense of majesty and awe that both space and the oceans convey.”
Portraying something as vast and unquantifiable as space and the ocean in a two-minute piece is no easy task. In the face of this challenge, he turned to something that was familiar – knowledge of other composers’ work.
“I certainly always have John Williams’ various fanfares swimming around in my head, along with Aaron Copland’s ‘Fanfare for the Common Man,’” Ninmer said. “Those musical references, combined with my research of the mission, provided inspiration as I began work on the piece.”
Ninmer describes his final product as follows:
The opening of the fanfare starts with trumpets performing the majestic theme, followed by the rest of the brass and percussion. The large leaps in the theme are meant to convey the wide expanse of space and the unknown depths of the ocean. After the slow opening, it then moves into a faster presentation of the theme in the woodwinds, evoking undulating ocean waves. Since part of the collaboration was our performing a “stress test” in the acoustic chamber that the PACE satellite was tested in, the final presentation of the theme showcases the full power of the ensemble.
Listen to the PACE Fanfare and watch the rocket launch.
Launch Day
Scrubbed: (verb) canceled, eliminated
It's the word anyone expecting to see a rocket launch doesn't want to hear. For the teams involved, it's the opposite of music to their ears.
As for the PACE Mission, it was high winds, inclement weather, and, ironically, cloud coverage along the Florida coast that warranted two scrubbed launch dates in a row.
But as they say, third time's the charm.
On Feb. 8, 2024, at 1:33 a.m., 48 hours after it was originally slated to be thrust into solar synchronous orbit, the PACE satellite was finally launched from Kennedy Space Center on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
At the Banana Creek launch viewing area, teams of the scientists, engineers and other contributors to the mission waited in sleepy, but starry-eyed anticipation for this pivotal moment when their years of work would be sent into action. Among them were a few members of the Marine Band who journeyed south for the event.
Few words can do justice to the power and voracity that observing a rocket launch delivers to the senses. Like music, it is a visceral experience best experienced in person.
At 6.35 miles away from the launch pad, the ground trembled. At 6.35 miles away from the launch pad, the ground trembled. Palm fronds rattled and so did the bones of a few Marine Band members who made the journey to see the launch.
“It was a thunderous roar like 10,000 fireworks going off at once,” Communication Strategist Staff Sgt. Chase Baran said. “The sound only hit me several seconds after the rocket was visibly airborne.”
It was like being in an acoustic testing chamber with the Marine Band playing at full force.
Clouds for miles captured the light put off by the rocket's flames. On a black, moonless night, it was momentarily high noon over the Sunshine State.
As PACE entered and surpassed the clouds, they burst into an orange glow until the rocket's altitude grew too distant. Up and up the rocket climbed until it was indistinguishable from the stars.
As the first stage boosters separated for return to Earth, remnant gasses spilled out in a glowing apparition that briefly danced gently in the sky.
The lightshow finally ended with a pair of sonic booms as the first stage rocket booster was redirected to a landing pad adjacent to the launch site.
“The biggest thing that stuck out to me was the enthusiasm and the sense of relief and excitement of all the people that worked on the project," Trombonist Master Gunnery Sgt. Chris Clark said. "The amount of joy and accomplishment when the satellite was safely on its way to orbit was really wonderful to see.”
After cheers and applause from the crowd, the bleachers quickly emptied as folks headed for their beds.
“All those years of work are now in space,” one person said while walking away.
“It’s funny how some of us are seeing this as a culmination, while the rest of us see it as just the beginning,” said another.