Strauss' Blue Danube waltz is launching into space
The Vienna Symphony Orchestra will perform the classical piece.
The celestial send-off on May 31 — livestreamed with free public screenings in Vienna, Madrid and New York — also will celebrate the European Space Agency's founding 50 years ago.
Although the music could be converted into radio signals in real time, according to officials, ESA will relay a pre-recorded version from the orchestra's rehearsal the day before to avoid technical issues.
The radio signals will hurtle away at the speed of light, or a mind-blowing more than one billion km/h.
That will put the music past the moon in 1.5 seconds, past Mars in 4.5 minutes, past Jupiter in 37 minutes and past Neptune in four hours.
Within 23 hours, the signals will be as far from Earth as NASA's Voyager 1, the world's most distant spacecraft, at more than 24 billion kilometres in interstellar space.
NASA also celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2008 by transmitting a song directly into deep space: the Beatles' Across the Universe.
And last year, NASA beamed up Missy Elliott's The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly) toward Venus.
Music has even flowed from another planet to Earth — courtesy of a NASA Mars rover.
Flight controllers at California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory sent a recording of will.i.am's Reach for the Stars to Curiosity in 2012 and the rover relayed it back.
These are all deep-space transmissions as opposed to the melodies streaming between NASA's Mission Control and orbiting crews since the mid-1960s.
Now it's Strauss' turn, after getting passed over for the Voyager Golden Records nearly a half-century ago.
Launched in 1977, NASA's twin Voyagers 1 and 2 each carry a gold-plated copper phonograph record, along with a stylus and playing instructions for anyone or anything out there.
The records contain sounds and images of Earth as well as 90 minutes of music.
The late astronomer Carl Sagan led the committee that chose Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Stravinsky pieces, along with modern and indigenous selections.
Among those skipped was Johann Strauss II, whose Blue Danube graced Stanley Kubrick's 1968 sci-fi opus 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The tourist board in Vienna, where Strauss was born on October 25, 1825, said it aims to correct this "cosmic mistake" by sending the "the most famous of all waltzes" to its destined home among the stars.
ESA's big radio antenna in Spain, part of the space agency's deep-space network, will do the honours.
"Music connects us all through time and space in a very particular way," ESA's director general Josef Aschbacher said.
Johann Strauss' Blue Danube will be beamed into the cosmos to mark the 200th anniversary of the waltz king's birth.
The Vienna Symphony Orchestra will perform the classical piece.
The celestial send-off on May 31 — livestreamed with free public screenings in Vienna, Madrid and New York — also will celebrate the European Space Agency's founding 50 years ago.
Although the music could be converted into radio signals in real time, according to officials, ESA will relay a pre-recorded version from the orchestra's rehearsal the day before to avoid technical issues.
The radio signals will hurtle away at the speed of light, or a mind-blowing more than one billion km/h.
That will put the music past the moon in 1.5 seconds, past Mars in 4.5 minutes, past Jupiter in 37 minutes and past Neptune in four hours.
Within 23 hours, the signals will be as far from Earth as NASA's Voyager 1, the world's most distant spacecraft, at more than 24 billion kilometres in interstellar space.
NASA also celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2008 by transmitting a song directly into deep space: the Beatles' Across the Universe.
And last year, NASA beamed up Missy Elliott's The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly) toward Venus.
Music has even flowed from another planet to Earth — courtesy of a NASA Mars rover.
Flight controllers at California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory sent a recording of will.i.am's Reach for the Stars to Curiosity in 2012 and the rover relayed it back.
These are all deep-space transmissions as opposed to the melodies streaming between NASA's Mission Control and orbiting crews since the mid-1960s.
Now it's Strauss' turn, after getting passed over for the Voyager Golden Records nearly a half-century ago.
Launched in 1977, NASA's twin Voyagers 1 and 2 each carry a gold-plated copper phonograph record, along with a stylus and playing instructions for anyone or anything out there.
The records contain sounds and images of Earth as well as 90 minutes of music.
The late astronomer Carl Sagan led the committee that chose Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Stravinsky pieces, along with modern and indigenous selections.
Among those skipped was Johann Strauss II, whose Blue Danube graced Stanley Kubrick's 1968 sci-fi opus 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The tourist board in Vienna, where Strauss was born on October 25, 1825, said it aims to correct this "cosmic mistake" by sending the "the most famous of all waltzes" to its destined home among the stars.
ESA's big radio antenna in Spain, part of the space agency's deep-space network, will do the honours.
"Music connects us all through time and space in a very particular way," ESA's director general Josef Aschbacher said.
Johann Strauss' Blue Danube will be beamed into the cosmos to mark the 200th anniversary of the waltz king's birth.
The Vienna Symphony Orchestra will perform the classical piece.
The celestial send-off on May 31 — livestreamed with free public screenings in Vienna, Madrid and New York — also will celebrate the European Space Agency's founding 50 years ago.
Although the music could be converted into radio signals in real time, according to officials, ESA will relay a pre-recorded version from the orchestra's rehearsal the day before to avoid technical issues.
The radio signals will hurtle away at the speed of light, or a mind-blowing more than one billion km/h.
That will put the music past the moon in 1.5 seconds, past Mars in 4.5 minutes, past Jupiter in 37 minutes and past Neptune in four hours.
Within 23 hours, the signals will be as far from Earth as NASA's Voyager 1, the world's most distant spacecraft, at more than 24 billion kilometres in interstellar space.
NASA also celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2008 by transmitting a song directly into deep space: the Beatles' Across the Universe.
And last year, NASA beamed up Missy Elliott's The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly) toward Venus.
Music has even flowed from another planet to Earth — courtesy of a NASA Mars rover.
Flight controllers at California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory sent a recording of will.i.am's Reach for the Stars to Curiosity in 2012 and the rover relayed it back.
These are all deep-space transmissions as opposed to the melodies streaming between NASA's Mission Control and orbiting crews since the mid-1960s.
Now it's Strauss' turn, after getting passed over for the Voyager Golden Records nearly a half-century ago.
Launched in 1977, NASA's twin Voyagers 1 and 2 each carry a gold-plated copper phonograph record, along with a stylus and playing instructions for anyone or anything out there.
The records contain sounds and images of Earth as well as 90 minutes of music.
The late astronomer Carl Sagan led the committee that chose Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Stravinsky pieces, along with modern and indigenous selections.
Among those skipped was Johann Strauss II, whose Blue Danube graced Stanley Kubrick's 1968 sci-fi opus 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The tourist board in Vienna, where Strauss was born on October 25, 1825, said it aims to correct this "cosmic mistake" by sending the "the most famous of all waltzes" to its destined home among the stars.
ESA's big radio antenna in Spain, part of the space agency's deep-space network, will do the honours.
"Music connects us all through time and space in a very particular way," ESA's director general Josef Aschbacher said.
Johann Strauss' Blue Danube will be beamed into the cosmos to mark the 200th anniversary of the waltz king's birth.
The Vienna Symphony Orchestra will perform the classical piece.
The celestial send-off on May 31 — livestreamed with free public screenings in Vienna, Madrid and New York — also will celebrate the European Space Agency's founding 50 years ago.
Although the music could be converted into radio signals in real time, according to officials, ESA will relay a pre-recorded version from the orchestra's rehearsal the day before to avoid technical issues.
The radio signals will hurtle away at the speed of light, or a mind-blowing more than one billion km/h.
That will put the music past the moon in 1.5 seconds, past Mars in 4.5 minutes, past Jupiter in 37 minutes and past Neptune in four hours.
Within 23 hours, the signals will be as far from Earth as NASA's Voyager 1, the world's most distant spacecraft, at more than 24 billion kilometres in interstellar space.
NASA also celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2008 by transmitting a song directly into deep space: the Beatles' Across the Universe.
And last year, NASA beamed up Missy Elliott's The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly) toward Venus.
Music has even flowed from another planet to Earth — courtesy of a NASA Mars rover.
Flight controllers at California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory sent a recording of will.i.am's Reach for the Stars to Curiosity in 2012 and the rover relayed it back.
These are all deep-space transmissions as opposed to the melodies streaming between NASA's Mission Control and orbiting crews since the mid-1960s.
Now it's Strauss' turn, after getting passed over for the Voyager Golden Records nearly a half-century ago.
Launched in 1977, NASA's twin Voyagers 1 and 2 each carry a gold-plated copper phonograph record, along with a stylus and playing instructions for anyone or anything out there.
The records contain sounds and images of Earth as well as 90 minutes of music.
The late astronomer Carl Sagan led the committee that chose Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Stravinsky pieces, along with modern and indigenous selections.
Among those skipped was Johann Strauss II, whose Blue Danube graced Stanley Kubrick's 1968 sci-fi opus 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The tourist board in Vienna, where Strauss was born on October 25, 1825, said it aims to correct this "cosmic mistake" by sending the "the most famous of all waltzes" to its destined home among the stars.
ESA's big radio antenna in Spain, part of the space agency's deep-space network, will do the honours.
"Music connects us all through time and space in a very particular way," ESA's director general Josef Aschbacher said.
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