Music in space

Music in space is music played in or broadcast from a spacecraft in outer space. The first ever song that was performed in space was a Ukrainian song “Watching the sky...”(“Дивлюсь я на небо”) sung on 12 August 1962 by Pavlo Popovych, cosmonaut from Ukraine at a special request of Serhiy Korolyov, Soviet rocket engineer and spacecraft designer from Ukraine. According to the Smithsonian Institution, the first musical instruments played in outer space were an 8-note Hohner "Little Lady" harmonica and a handful of small bells carried by American astronauts Wally Schirra and Thomas P. Stafford aboard Gemini 6A. Upon achieving a space rendezvous in Earth orbit with their sister ship Gemini 7 in December 1965, Schirra and Stafford played a rendition of "Jingle Bells" over the radio after jokingly claiming to have seen an unidentified flying object piloted by Santa Claus. The instruments had been smuggled on-board without NASA's knowledge, leading Mission Control director Elliot See to exclaim "You're too much" to Schirra after the song. The harmonica was donated to the Smithsonian by Schirra in 1967, with his note that it "...plays quite well".

In the 1970s music tape cassettes were brought to the American space station Skylab, while Soviet cosmonauts Aleksandr Laveikin and Yuri Romanenko brought a guitar to the space station Mir in 1987. Musical instruments must be checked for gases they may emit before being taken aboard the confined environment of a space station. As of 2003, instruments that have been aboard the International Space Station include a flute, a keyboard, a guitar, a saxophone, and a didgeridoo.

Music in space has been a focal point of public relation events of various human spaceflight programs. NASA astronaut Carl Walz played a rendition of the Elvis Presley song "Heartbreak Hotel" aboard the ISS in 2003 which was also recorded and transmitted to Earth. Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield, commander of Expedition 35 to the International Space Station, recorded a music video of the song "Space Oddity" by David Bowie aboard the space station. The first music video ever shot in space, the video went viral and received widespread international media coverage after being posted to YouTube. Bowie himself later called the cover "possibly the most poignant version of the song ever created". Hadfield also recorded his own album titled Space Sessions: Songs from a Tin Can.