Nearly 500 hundred miles above Earth, a band of satellites whizzes around the planet. These planet-observing orbiters collect and transmit data, most often in the form of imagery. They collect enormously valuable information—on the planet's atmosphere, biosphere, and oceans, for example—but it is largely thankless work. The fact is, most of us are oblivious to the goings-on of machines in low-Earth orbit.

How does an organization like NASA make the invisible work of satellites visible to the average person? For years, the agency relied upon the spellbinding imagery collected by its spacecraft; but earlier this year decided to try another approach. It tapped Jason Klimoski and Lesley Chang of Brooklyn architecture studio StudioKCA to translate the paths of a handful of Earth-orbiting satellites into a more intimate physical space. “[NASA] came to us and said we want to be able to experience the data and the trajectories,” Klimoski says. “That’s a really interesting problem.”

The seashell-shaped NASA Orbit Pavilion amplifies a chorus of 20 distinct sounds that correspond to the International Space Station and a suite of 19 satellites circling the globe. Right now, the pavilion is at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California. This summer it moves on to the Huntington Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California. The design team worked with Shane Myrbeck of Arup, who assigned a sound to each satellite, then plotted a series of surround-sound speakers inside the pavilion so the sounds indicate the satellite's position relative to people seated inside. The pavilion was designed to resemble a seashell—a nod holding a shell to your ear and hearing the ocean. The pavilion is made of 72 6x25-foot aluminum panels stitched together to form a circle. Each panel is perforated in a way that prevents the 20 different sounds from becoming garbled.

Each sound was selected to give personality to an otherwise anonymous piece of equipment. You might hear the sound of a wave crashing in your left ear, followed quickly by that of a croaking frog, a human voice, or a swaying tree branch—aural interpretations of each satellite's mission. And the designers exercised their artistic license with another characteristic: As each sound travels around the room, tracing the position of its respective satellite above, behind, and beneath you, it creates a swirl of sonic activity—but the modeled orbital periods are faster than their real-world counterparts. The ISS, for example, takes roughly 90 minutes to orbit Earth, but the duration of its orbit in the installation is condensed to around five. These design decisions are what make the installation work

NASA's Orbit Pavilion, in other words, may not be a totally accurate reflection of what’s happening high above our heads, but it’s certainly a clever way to make the wonder of outer space just a little easier to grasp.