Morning computer hovering

Masakatsu Sashie.

Not long after it brought on a fresh crew of astronauts, China’s Tiangong space station has received yet another group of new visitors: fruit flies.

As Space.com reports, the critters — consisting of 15 adults and 40 pupae — caught a ride aboard the recent Tianzhou 8 resupply mission, which successfully linked up with the orbital outpost on November 15.

Now, the flies will be used to study the biological effects of living beyond the pull of Earth’s gravity — and beyond the purview of its magnetic field.

Synthesizer workstations can look like the inside of NASA command modules for spaceflights, so it makes perfect sense that a synthesizer session could be used to create an ersatz field recording of an orbital space station. Such “space ambience,” or satellite ASMR, is heard here as an array of clanking and voices and beeps and signals, and an overall metallic reverberance that lends the whole thing a sense of place.