Part 1: Space Audio Classification: inconspicuously_scraping_NASA

Hi readers thanks for coming back for another installment of DIY data science featuring me — a job searcher who would prefer to do python web scraping investigations like this one so I code on a Friday night (I’m actually 27, but I am often mistaken for Bernie Sanders’ older brother).

Why am I scraping data? Well when I am not data sciencing (yes I am making that a word) — I am making music — so I have a thing for audio. Turns out NASA also has a thing for audio — they (well University of Iowa) host a massive library of electromagnetic waves that happen to fall in the audible human frequency range. According to Dr. Bounds from the University:

“electromagnetic waves in a frequency range from ~4Hz up to ~12kHz. It just so happens this is the audible frequency range so we can easily convert the waveform data into a sound file. What you are listening to is not a sound in space but an electromagnetic wave (radio wave).”

Thank you Dr. Bounds! Ok I can go on about how cool this Van Allen NASA was, but you can Google around for that. What I immediately thought was:

Could it be possible to create an anomaly detection model (AKA an alien listening mechanism) based on the audio from the Van Allen mission?!

In diametric opposition to Fermes Paradox, let’s break down that outlandish thought into a 3 part series that I will post over a few weeks. In this article I will focus on item #1 below, specifically: how I…