Space rock: 30 years of shuttle wake-up music

Forget desert islands, if there’s one place you really want a comforting song at the ready, it’s in the cold, dark vacuum of space.

NASA officials have long understood the soothing power of music and have been using it to roust astronauts in space since the Apollo program.

Click for: History of NASA’s musical wake-up calls

Over the past three decades, NASA has beamed hundreds of musical wake-up calls to crews aboard the space shuttle fleet.

Songs are typically chosen by an astronaut’s family or friends and have covered almost every genre imaginable. Rock, pop, jazz, blues, country, metal, punk, classical – astronauts, it turns out, are a diverse bunch.

Below is a 3 ½ minute “˜audio snapshot’ of the past 30 years of NASA’s musical wake-up calls, sourced entirely from NASA’s audio archives.

Space shuttle wake-up music mix by Global Edmonton

Artists featured: The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Chumbawamba, AC/DC, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, John Lennon, Elton John, Louis Armstrong, The Beatles, Everclear, Talking Heads, Kenny Loggins, Steppenwolf, Foo Fighters, Tom Petty, R.E.M., The White Stipes.