What if satellite cloud data could become music? Meet Hakuryu — a dragon born as the European Space Agency’s EarthCARE satellite, singing a song of peace for our planet.
EarthCARE is the European Space Agency’s most advanced Earth Explorer launched to date, equipped with instruments that help us understand clouds and aerosols in new and unprecedented ways.
It is a collaboration between ESA and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, who designed and developed the satellite’s Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR) instrument. JAXA called EarthCARE Hakuryu, which is Japanese for White Dragon.
Hakuryu now lends its name to the title of a groundbreaking immersive installation that creates an audiovisual story from EarthCARE cloud and aerosol data in a way that has never been seen or heard before.
Through data sonification, Hakuryu transforms over thirty types of data into immersivesoundscapes and music. Clouds become choirs as Hakuryu sings to Earth, with voices from notable public, scientific and ESA figures joined by those needing care most – people from the frontline of climate change, displacement and conflict.
Adding to this, data from atmospheric elements such as rain, snow, dust and smoke are rendered as rich environmental sonic textures. Simultaneously the same data is transformed into clouds, creating a vibrant trail behind an animated white dragon. Viewers slowly fly with Hakuryu, in a beautiful representation of Earth as it moves from day into night on its journey around the sun.
The film you see here comprises one entire EarthCARE orbit around our planet. It is running live all week at ESA’s Living Planet Symposium in Vienna, from 23 to 27 June 2025, as an immersive installation. Following its debut, Hakuryu will travel the world in a variety of ways soon to be revealed.
More about EarthCARE: https://esa.int/earthcare
More about the EarthCARE DISC: https://earth.esa.int/eogateway/activities/earthcare-disc
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