Crewed spaceflight is, of course, serious business. Even today, the cost of sending people is so high that mission planners try to maximize every hour a given crew is in space. Still, astronauts and cosmonauts are human beings, and human beings require rest and breaks from constant work even though they are in orbit or on their way to and from the moon.

With that in mind, one of the most enduring traditions in space flight is the crew listening to music in space and even in the final minutes of a countdown. It started in 1961 and continues today, when Polaris Dawn astronaut Sarah Gillis, a gifted classical violinist, performed aboard Crew Dragon ‘Resilience’ while in Earth orbit.

The First Time Music Was Played In A Capsule

The first time music was played inside a space capsule was the first crewed spaceflight: Yuri Gagarin’s world-shaking orbital flight on April 12, 1961. Understandably excited and undoubtedly nervous about his upcoming rocket ride, Gagarin had little sleep the night before his launch. Later, while he was strapped tightly into his seat in the Vostok capsule and with the hatch shut behind him, technical issues delayed the launch multiple times (another long-lasting tradition of spaceflight!), and Gagarin grew restless and bored. Despite being the sole person aboard the spacecraft, Gagarin had little to do but wait for the countdown clock to reach zero and ignition.

Checking in on their passenger, mission controllers asked him how he was faring inside Vostok’s tight confines. Gagarin admitted to being a bit fidgety and suggested that music might help. After a few minutes, the countdown proceeded, and launch controllers figured out how to play records of Russian love songs into the capsule. While the names of those songs seem lost to history, the tradition of music sent to soothe the nerves of cosmonauts continues to this day.

Today, Russian launches are often punctuated by music—even in the final minutes of a countdown. During the last thirty minutes of many Soyuz launches, preparations have been completed: checklists are done, system statuses are confirmed, range safety is verified, the rocket is fueled, and the clock ticks down to zero. Instead of leaving large gaps in air-to-ground communication, Russian mission controllers will often play music over the loop, and that music is often chosen by the cosmonauts themselves.

Here’s an example of music over the Russian command loop, with the countdown passing thirty minutes until liftoff. The music played varies from traditional Russian songs to raucous rock and roll, depending on the crew’s preferences.

Conway Twitty Sings In Russian For Cosmonauts

One of the most endearing stories of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Mission from 1975 is also one that is largely forgotten: American country music superstar and all-time great re-recorded one of his biggest hits in Russian so that it could be played to Soviet cosmonauts Aleksey Leonov and Valeriy Kubasov while they were in orbit with their American counterparts Thomas Stafford, Vance Brand and Deke Slayton.

Colin Fries, a NASA archivist, wrote down the story:

“So the stage was set for the global meeting when Thomas Stafford, the commander of the American spacecraft, contacted his favorite singer, and fellow Oklahoman, Conway Twitty in March 1975 to ask a favor. Stafford thought it would be a great idea to present cassettes to the Russians when the crews exchanged gifts in space and he called Twitty in Oklahoma to see if he would be willing to record them.

“At first Conway thought it was a joke. Someone suggested recording a song in Russian and when Stafford heard about it he was excited. He asked if Conway could do “Hello Darlin'”. Fortunately the artist had done a few things like that in other languages than English when he was a rock artist so he agreed.

“When I discovered it was for real, I immediately got busy…Fortunately I found Prof. Gurij Chemelev at Oklahoma University to teach me enough Russian to get by.”

“Conway Twitty tells the rest of the story in his autobiography:”So he came down to the studio and he sat on a stool right there beside me. I thought it would take maybe an hour. But it took a long time. The professor would say No, no, no, when I got the accent wrong. Having told me that the title translated into ‘Privet Radost’ in Russian, first problem was that I’d say the words softly and he would shout more no-nos at me. We went around and around, and it took him forever to understand that you don’t just holler ‘Privet Radost’ at a woman.

” ‘In Russia they do,’ he replied.

“Anyway, I finally got it all finished and sent the tape to Stafford. A short time later I was out in L.A. doing a show, and I was back in the dressing room watching Walter Cronkite. On this particular day all the astronauts and cosmonauts were up there in the same space capsule. The camera was focusing on them, and out the window you could see the earth spinning below. It was July 17, 1975.

“All of a sudden, the talking stopped and the song started playing: ‘Privet Radost.’ That song was played in Russian all around the world. I don’t know how many millions of people heard it–the only time anything like that had ever happened! It was a tremendous experience.”

Collin Fries, In Tune With Détente, with excerpts from Conway Twitty’s biography, “The Conway Twitty Story: An Authorized Biography”

Fortunately, while this memory has probably escaped all but the most ardent of space fans and historians, the song has lived on and you can hear it for yourself:

NASA’s Wakeup Calls

Perhaps the best-known examples of music in space are NASA’s wake-up calls to crews in flight, which date back to 1965, and Gemini 6. On that mission, Jack Jones sang new lyrics to the Broadway hit song “Hello Dolly” and sent them to the crew at the end of their sleep period. Before that, on Mercury and early Gemini flights, that had never been done.

Later Gemini missions featured Trini Lopez, Beethoven, Louis Armstrong, and other Broadway, standards, and classical selections. The new tradition continued through Apollo, with missions including the likes of Robert Goulet, Frank Sinatra, The Carpenters, and other popular musicians of the time.

Skylab’s Song From The Space Coast

Skylab had equally conservative musical choices, with music from The Marine Corps Band, Julie London and others. It featured an interesting choice, “My Skylab Home,” written and performed by Chuck Morley of Cocoa Beach, Florida and sent to NASA courtesy of Bill Cummings of Titusville radio station WRMF.

The Shuttle Era

Then, in the Shuttle era, the range of choices expanded almost exponentially: Willie Nelson, John Denver, Carole King, Elton John, The Byrds, and too many others to name punctuated the usual fare of military themes and college fight songs.

Today, on ISS, the routine continues. The choices are often quite modern: Brandi Carlile, Innocence Mission, Muse, and other alternative rock choices have been played alongside classics from The Rolling Stones and the Moody Blues. There are so many examples, but no central theme other than “wake up, time to get going” is present in the used songs.

“Wake-up music is one of my favorite parts of a mission,” says Pamela Melroy, a veteran of three shuttle missions between 2000 and 2007. “The way I was taught by my commanders, and the way I ran wake-up music on my flight as a commander, was to know in advance what crew member and what song was being played each morning.” That way, she says, there would be no question of whose family was waiting for acknowledgment on the ground.

“I set a small timer right by my head for about two minutes before, and I would gently wake up the crew member whose turn it was and make sure they were in place on the flight deck—upstairs— in time to hear the music,” Melroy explains. “I would stay up there with them, make sure they knew the name of the song if they weren’t sure, and basically be there with them to witness their moment. It’s a very fond memory from being a commander—to share those few minutes with each crew member and their loving families.”

One of the most popular wake-up selections through the years has been Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World,” which has appeared on no fewer than 11 shuttle missions, including one mission on which it was played twice for two different astronauts. (The song’s late co-composer, George David Weiss, died August 23 at the age of 89.) Armstrong’s recording was cued up at least three times for Scott Parazynski, who flew on five shuttle missions between 1994 and 2007. “‘What a Wonderful World’ was always the perfect accompaniment to the vistas from space,” Parazynski says. “My family played it for me on several missions, typically before big EVA days.” (Short for extravehicular activity, EVA is NASA-speak for a spacewalk.) “

My son Luke also dedicated the theme to Star Wars to me before the solar array repair we did on STS 120,” a 2007 shuttle mission to the International Space Station, Parazynski adds. That was probably Parazynski’s biggest day ever on the job, he says, and “it really made me smile, and put me in the perfect state of mind to go face the challenge.”

Wake-up music also offers an opportunity for lightheartedness, as was the case on STS 92, a 2000 mission to the space station. On the fifth day of the mission, ground control woke the crew with “Camelot,” from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. That moment rates as three-time shuttle flier Leroy Chiao’s favorite encounter with shuttle music. All during training the crew was quoting lines from the film, “and on the day of the first spacewalk it was played for us,” Chiao says. “It set the tone for the day, and we had a perfect spacewalk.” Like Satchmo, Monty Python has been well represented on shuttle flights—the theme to Monty Python’s Flying Circus television show 72 was played twice, and the U.K. comedy troupe’s “The Galaxy Song” was played once.

_{A Little Flight Music: NASA Contest for Wake-Up Songs Prompts Astronauts to Recall Tuneful Highlights, by John Matson, Scientific American, August 27, 2010}

The Tragic Beauty of “Last Rendez-Vous (Ron’s Piece)”

Space Shuttle astronaut Ron McNair was a remarkable person for many, many reasons. A top student and so mechanically inclined that he earned the affectionate nickname “Gizmo” as a child, McNair was also an accomplished athlete and saxophonist: his river ran wide and deep, and after graduating from North Carolina A&T with his bachelor’s degree, he earned a PhD in Physics in 1976 from MIT.

In 1978, Dr. McNair was selected as a NASA astronaut, and he flew to space in 1984 aboard Challenger during the STS-41-B mission. NASA quickly selected McNair to fly again on a second Shuttle mission. During that mission, he planned to play a saxophone solo on live television and to record the performance to be included in celebrated artist Jean Michel Jarre’s album Rendez-Vous.

Those plans never came to fruition. McNair was one of the seven heroes who paid the price of NASA’s poorest hour when it chose to launch the OV-099 Challenger on January 26, 1986, on the infamously tragic STS-51L mission.

The piece of music that McNair was to record for has instead become a moving tribute to one of the brightest and most talented heroes America has ever produced.

Music Performed In Space

Playing music to wake up a crew or soothe their nerves is one thing, but the tradition of crews in flight creating music also goes back to the beginning. Despite their heavy workloads, imminent danger, and incredible responsibilities, astronauts and cosmonauts have found time to make music while traveling in space.

The first song to be performed in space was by Ukrainian cosmonaut Pavlo Popovych, and his selection was a Ukrainian folk song called “Watching the Sky and Thinking a Thought.” There is even a recording of the song in a video biography of Popovych:

On the American side, “Jingle Bells” was the first song to be played using a musical instrument in space. On 16 December 1965, it was played on a harmonica and bells by astronauts Wally Schirra and Thomas P. Stafford during NASA’s Gemini 6A space flight. It can be heard here:

Music has been performed in space several other times since Gemini 6, with perhaps the most famous example of it was Col. Chris Hadfield’s performance of a David Bowie song while Hadfield was aboard the International Space Station:

When asked about the version of “Space Oddity” before his death, David Bowie praised it as “possibly the most poignant version of the song ever created.” Given that the record sold millions of copies, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame included “Space Oddity” in their list of “The 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll, that is high praise for Hadfield’s rendition.

Where Goes Humanity, Music Will Stay With Them

It is probably safe to say that music is one of the most popular and enduring forms of artistic expression and one that crosses nearly every cultural boundary.

That said, given the long history of music in spaceflight over the past sixty-three years, it is fair to say that the traditions will continue. It makes one wonder: what will be the first song performed on Mars, or even the Moon, when we reach those places? How long until professional musicians or a famous band goes to space to perform or record? Only time will tell.