Scream in Space won a competition run by Surrey Satellite Techonology Ltd (SSTL) in 2011 to propose an idea for an app to run on their STRaND-1 smartphone nanosatellite.

With the help of the public, we’re testing the hypothesis that in space no one can hear you scream. It’s a statement that has been well known in popular culture since appearing as the tagline to the 1979 sci-fi film ‘Alien’ – but how many people have really tested this claim? Whilst the conclusion of this experiment may seem clear to many, it is our hope that through this investigation thousands of people worldwide can learn more about several aspects of physics (including orbits, acoustics and much more) and get excited about the field of satellite technology!

In coming up with this idea, we thought about what features the Android phone has which are not usually present on conventional satellites – and naturally the speaker and microphone are two such components. It would seem a shame not to leverage the power of these additions, and so the idea was born…

Read more about the project on the SSTL blog and New Scientist, or listen to the Cambridge University Spaceflight team discussing Scream in Space on the Space Boffins podcast earlier in 2012:

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2012 Cambridge University Spaceflight