"Sunrise Number 1" and "The Dreams You Give" have earned spots on the highest-flying music program in existence: NASA's wakeup music for the crew of the space shuttle Endeavour.
These tunes aren't Billboard mega-sellers ... yet. They're original songs that were entered over the past few months in the space agency's "Space Rock" contest. More than 1.5 million votes were registered. "Sunrise Number 1" by the group Stormy Mondays garnered almost half of those votes. "The Dreams You Give," performed by Brian Plunkett and his family, came in second.
Their reward? "Dreams You Give" will be played for Endeavour's crew at 6:56 p.m. ET on May 30, and "Sunrise Number 1" will air at 5:56 p.m. ET on May 31 to kick off the astronauts' last scheduled workday in space. Those may sound like ungodly hours for wakeup music, but that's just because of the mission's topsy-turvy, graveyard-shift schedule.
The latest contest follows up on an earlier poll for previously recorded hits. This time around, the entries had to be original works, composed around a spaceflight theme and submitted by the authors. Both of the top songs are bouncy, good-time tunes well-suited to get the astronauts out of their zero-G sleeping bags.
Stormy Mondays' lyrics declare that "we don't care 'bout rain or shine, when you're in space the weather's fine." The Plunkett kids tell the astronauts, "Thank you for showing us the journey from the pillow fort to the shuttle bay." Not a bad way to wake up ...
More on space music:
- Shuttle Discovery gets a 'Star Trek' send-off
- Wake up like an astronaut
- A heroic space flute duet
- Space flutist hits high note
You can connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. And for something completely different, check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
