14 DAY TRIAL // NASA and music passionate can create – if talented, or simply pick up the wake-up songs for the astronauts that will be flying on the last two space shuttle missions.
This “American Idol” of space has a website that was opened on Friday, where people can choose from a list of 40 previously played songs, hoping that their choice will be played during the last flight of the Discovery shuttle in November.
All those interested or simply curious, can access https://songcontest.nasa.gov/home.aspx
Space shuttle wake-up songs are rather important, and traditionally they are chosen by an astronaut's family and friends, which makes this idea a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the public.
Anyone can choose two songs to wake up the Discovery crew for the 11 days of the mission, and the songs that get most of the votes, win.
NASA also wanted to give a chance to people that have musical aspirations and are passionate about creating songs, and offers the possibility of original song submissions for the last mission aboard Endeavour, set for launch on February 26, 2011.
All contestants must upload their creations to the contest's website by January 10, and after a preliminary selection, the remaining songs will be submitted to public vote, and the top two songs will become the first thing the astronauts hear in the morning.
Mark Kelly, the commander of Endeavour's final mission said that “space shuttle crews really enjoy the morning wake-up music [and] while we don't have the best-quality speaker in the space shuttle, it will be interesting to hear what the public comes up with.”
Music is one of the best way to communicate and to bring people together, and this might just be the reason for which NASA has already done this in the past.
Not later than the beginning of this week, NASA worked with Mary J. Blige for a campaign that encourages young women to chose a careers in maths or science.
Also in 2008, the agency collaborated with Sir Paul McCartney and broadcast the song “Across the Universe” into space, using the Deep Space Network.
It has been almost 30 years that NASA flies reusable space shuttles into orbit, and it's now time that it retires the last three, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour.
But before they're off duty, the three spaceships will fulfill one last mission, each: Discovery will deliver a humanoid robot and a storage room to the International Space Station, Endeavour will deliver a $1.5 billion astrophysics experiment to the ISS and Atlantis, which flew its last scheduled flight in May, will be the rescue ship for Endeavour's final flight.
As NASA makes way for its new plan of sending astronauts to an asteroid by 2025, a possible third shuttle mission for the summer of 2011 is being discussed in Congress.