Friday, August 20, 2010

Wake up The Astronauts

NASA has a long history of using music to wake up the astronauts on space missions going back to the Apollo days. Frequently the music is space themed or a little inside joke for the astronauts.

For the next two shuttle missions, you can help choose the music through Space Rock. For STS-133, currently scheduled for launch on November 1st, you can choose from a list of 40 songs they have used in the past and vote for your favorites. The top two votes will wake up the astronauts during the mission (leaving plenty of room for NASA mission managers to mess around on the other days with their own songs).

For the last shuttle mission, they are giving budding singer-songwriters a chance to get in on the action by writing and submitting their own wake up song. Wish I were more musical...can't imagine a better break than waking up the astronauts!

Reprinted with permission from the Half-Astrophysicist Blog.

2 comments:

OrbsCorbs said...

I like these promotions by NASA. They keep the people interested in space.

kkdither said...

I went to vote for the song that immediately came to mind. I thought would be perfect... and it wasn't there. I guess all the scientists are too young, now. How many of you remember, "Good Morning Starshine" by the Olivers?

Here are some of the lyrics:
Good mornin' starshine, the earth says hello. You twinkle above us. We twinkle below.

I had to go back and listen to it again. grooveshark.com has it. It is definitely 60-ish music. Lots of filler in between the lines. hehehee