How music is sent to space and why astronauts need it — BBC News

[0:00] 10 cls go for core stage engines can you get radio up in space well kind of when astronauts [0:15] are hundreds of thousands of miles away from home they can't just put on their favorite song or tune [0:20] into a radio station for missions like nasa's artemis 2 program the playlist the astronauts [0:26] wake up to isn't random the songs are actually carefully chosen to comfort them and also to [0:32] motivate them when they're away from earth so who decides what gets played up in space and why is [0:38] music so important we've spoken to someone from nasa at the heart of mission control in houston [0:44] british astronaut tim peak dr eleanor armstrong who's a space expert from leicester uni [0:50] and the rapper denzel curry whose song was played to artemis up in space can you just talk to me [0:56] why music is important to the crew um how it works how do you get music up there like yeah [1:05] what is that about you know i can't speak exactly for why music is important for specifically each [1:11] member of the crew but i think just in general i you know i would say just the same reason why music [1:16] is important for for the rest of us i mean we all have our own morning wake-up routine but you know [1:23] i know for me personally uh what gets me sometimes in the zone whether it's like before i go and um [1:31] i'm going to present and do a speech in front of a crowd or you know maybe before as an athlete gets [1:37] ready for for their game or for their race you know i listen you listen to like the playtrist [1:42] the playlist you have a soundtrack on to again to get you in the zone and so it's a very similar um [1:48] thing that we're doing for our crew they are in space they are by themselves they are going around the [1:52] moon i think the least that that they can do when they get wake up is to have a nice familiar [1:58] song that um just reminds them i think a little bit of home and so so you know this playlist that [2:03] was curated they were it was selected by the crew uh also with contributions from their friends and [2:08] their families you know it's a blend of some personal favorites as well as some specific specific [2:14] meaningful tracks uh for this mission do you know exactly sort of how the music is beamed up to [2:20] the craft at all you know the sort of technicalities of that i know that's like uh yeah i don't really [2:26] know how it works you know so you know those songs are downloaded and then with our team um with the [2:32] flight controllers and mission control they help be able to then broadcast that to the crew just like [2:36] how we do all of the other communications uh with uh with our crews in space why is music from your [2:43] point of view and it was played on the iss why is it so important music gives you a connection back to [2:48] earth it reminds you of things you know times in your life when you've heard that music maybe it [2:53] reminds you of friends of family and so i think it's really important to have that connection and [2:58] also depending on your mood you know if you want to exercise in space you might want to put on [3:02] something that gives you some motivation to go and work out if it's in the evening you're taking [3:06] photographs you might want to relax and unwind and you want might want some really good music for [3:11] that so i think music is really important depending on the mood we're in what type of music you want to [3:16] listen to yeah that connection to earth you know how important is that i've never been to space [3:21] so i don't know what that vast void the emptiness is like what i guess what does it feel like to [3:27] have i guess human music played up in space i mean it is quite surreal you look back and you see [3:33] the entire planet and um that's it that's home this lovely beautiful sort of blue green white marble [3:40] uh marble in in the blackness of space and and for this artemis 2 crew you know they're 400 000 [3:46] kilometers away from uh from home and earth is starting to look pretty small in the window so to [3:52] actually have that music inside your capsule um is really important to make that connection back to [3:58] your loved ones and why does music get played on space missions doctor so there's a bunch of different [4:04] reasons um uh there's a history of playing these songs in the uh opening of like the morning on [4:11] space missions um that dates way back to the gemini era which is the second space program that the nasa [4:18] ran um and this kind of draws on a longer history of military and particularly the us navy playing wake [4:24] up songs in the morning um so some of the early songs that we see in the gemini era include things [4:30] like hello dolly uh which was played on gemini 6 as rendition by jack jones and this was during the [4:37] first rendezvous between two crude spacecraft in space um but there's also a long history of using [4:43] these songs um on non-personed missions so for example the voyager mission uh that has gone out past [4:50] the edge of the solar system into deep space uh also has a disc that contains lots of songs on it [4:55] um addresses from the director of the un um uh popular culture songs from the united states and [5:00] the uk as well as like historic songs like historic music like Bach um and cultural music from around [5:08] the world uh representing the diversity of human experience so what impact can music have like does [5:13] it help the astronauts focus stay calm or just make them alert really early in the morning it's to try [5:19] and kind of pep their morning up and give them a good start to the day um actually when they play pink [5:24] pony club uh on the mission recently um the the commander of the mission uh reed wiseman uh said [5:31] to houston that they were really sad that they hadn't played the chorus because everyone was really [5:35] excited about singing along to the pink pony club chorus um but so i think it's the idea is like it's [5:41] meant to start the day off on a good foot um but also it's meant to signify things that are happening [5:45] so for example some of the previous missions um during the apollo era they would play songs from [5:51] people's universities um often when they were coming back on the last day they would play [5:56] uh the dean martin song going back to houston um so kind of it's meant to i guess signal something [6:02] about what's happening in the mission the usa is literally gone taken humans the furthest [6:07] ever you know is that something that like interests you yeah in the grand scheme of things yeah but i [6:13] wasn't really following the artemis thing it just kind of like i just woke up and then it was like [6:18] they played your songs in space so i was like whoa you know what does that song in particular [6:23] mean to you and has what that song means to you changed now i suppose since it's been played in [6:29] space i just thought it was like there's a dope song especially when i didn't know what dave was [6:34] talking about on the song and i still nailed it that was like funny then we get a gold record from it so [6:41] at that time i was like dang like that's it's like it started off being like to me like hilarious [6:48] like man we made a really dope song even though um even through the circumstances and now it's like [6:55] one of the it's being played in space now i'm just like oh this has a whole second life now like you know