NASA’s New Moon Rocket Crackles 40 Million Times Greater Than A Bowl Of Rice Krispies, Say Scientists

When NASA launched its Saturn V “Moon rocket” in the 1960s and 1970s it was said to have been so loud that it melted concrete. In reality, it did nothing of the sort. So when the space agency launched its successor, the Space Launch System (SLS), last November on the Artemis I mission a group of scientists wanted to get ahead of any misinformation and take detailed noise measurements.

What they measured was unexpectedly loud.

The world’s new most powerful rocket—exceeding the thrust of the Saturn V by 13%—proved much louder than anyone predicted when it launched at 1:47 a.m. ET on November 22, 2022 from Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

“We found the Artemis 1 noise level at 5 km had a crackling quality about 40 million times greater than a bowl of Rice Krispies,” said Whitney Coyle, one of the authors of a new report published in the Acoustical Society of America’s journal JASA Express Letters.

The crackling sound from shock waves—instantaneous sound pressure increases—is a feature of rocket launches.

The researchers from Brigham Young University and Rollins College in Florida placed microphones at various locations around Kennedy Space Center for the night launch.

At 1.5 km from the pad the rocket’s noise reached 136 decibels. From 5.2 km away it was still 129 decibels. Every 10 decibels is an order of magnitude increase.

The launch was nearly 20 decibels higher than predicted by a model before the launch.

“We hope these early results will help prevent the spread of possible misinformation, as happened with Saturn V,” said Kent Gee, one of the authors. “Numerous websites and discussion forums suggested sound levels that were far too high, with inaccurate reports of the Saturn 5’s sound waves melting concrete and causing grass fires.”

During the Artemis 1 mission the SLS carried the Orion spacecraft into space and on a journey around the Moon, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean on December 11, 2022.

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.