Space Waltz: ESA to put Strauss among the stars on his 200th birthday
Johann Strauss II was born in 1825 and two centuries later he is the result of a groundbreaking decision to correct what the Vienna Tourist Board and the European Space Agency (ESA) are calling an historic mistake in the transmission of Earthly culture.
In 1977, NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 probes were sent into space with 27 pieces of music, referred to as the 'Golden Records'. They were records designed to showcase mankind's greatest achievements.
But The Danube Waltz, despite its seminal appearance in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey which was made a decade before the launch the Voyager probes, was not included – something many Austrians and classical music fans alike feel is wholly unjust.
A NASA committee selected 115 images from Earth to be encoded into the golden record attached to both probes, plus a collection of sounds from nature, then a catalogue of music was added from different cultures and eras including Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. But there was no room for Herr Strauss.
"The absence of the most famous of all waltzes from the 1977 Voyager Golden Record is a cosmic mistake that we are correcting with 'Waltz into Space'," says Norbert Kettner, Director of the Vienna Tourist Board. "At a distance of more than 25 billion kilometers from Earth, Voyager 1 is the most distant man-made object in space. As part of our mission with the European Space Agency, we are sending 'By the Beautiful Blue Danube' in the direction of the space probe that is already traveling through interstellar space."
The European Space Agency is making this possible while marking their own special anniversary.
'In 2025 we have a wonderful double anniversary," writes ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher in a statement released today. "The 200th anniversary of the birth of Johann Strauss II and the 50th anniversary of the ESA. I am delighted that we can celebrate both by broadcasting a live performance of the Danube Waltz into space from our Cebreros ground station."
At a press conference held on Monday morning at a 70s-themed meeting space at Vienna's Hoxton hotel, Norbert Kettner sat alongside Mehran Sarkarati from the European Space Agency, and Vienna Symphony Orchestra chief Jan Nast to outline that an hour-long "interstellar concert" by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra will take place on May 31, 2025 at 20:30 CET at the MAK Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna.
Conducted by Petr Popelka, the orchestra will perform a selection of galactic-themed works culminating in the Danube Waltz, which will be transmitted in real time to the European Space Agency's (ESA) Deep Space Antenna DSA 2 in Cebreros, Spain.
From there, the waltz will be transmitted into the universe as an electromagnetic wave at the speed of light in the direction of Voyager 1. 23 hours later, the signal will catch up with NASA's space probe, which has been traveling since 1977 to convey earthly masterpieces to what planetary scientist Carl Sagan called "advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space."
According to the mission's press release on Monday, ESA Deep Space Antenna DSA 2 "is primarily used for deep space missions, in other words for communicating with objects in orbits more than two million kilometres away from Earth. In order to transmit the Danube Waltz, the signal will be sent into space as an electromagnetic wave at the speed of light (299,792,458 m/s – the fastest speed possible in our universe).
It will reach the orbit of the Moon after approximately 1.34 seconds, the orbit of Mars after 4 minutes and 20 seconds, the orbit of Jupiter after 37 minutes, the orbit of Neptune after 4 hours and the limits of our solar system, called the heliopause, after 17 hours. The signal will then leave our solar system. After 23 hours and 3 minutes, it will catch up with Voyager 1 and venture even deeper into interstellar space. Strauss' waltz will then travel through space forever."
The historic concert will also be streamed live.
"We want to allow as many people as possible to experience this absolutely unique event live," said Kettner at the press conference. "In Vienna, there will be a public screening at the Danube Canal for the local community, in New York at Bryant Park, and in Spain right next to the antenna."
"This broadcast will be a special moment," writes ESA's Aschbacher, "that will show that music – just like space – connects all of humanity.'
The mission can also be followed via a global livestream on and the Vienna Tourist Board's Instagram channel.
Music lovers can find their own place amongst the stars by sponsoring one of the 13,743 notes from Strauss' masterpiece through the 'Space Notes' initiative on the mission's website.
It's free to participate and all supporters' names will symbolically accompany the work into space. One of the first ambassadors is Brian W. Cook, who was an assistant director to Stanley Kubrick on three pictures. And it's certainly the Kubrick connection that cemented the most famous Waltz as a true space anthem.
NASA gave the piece another airing when the space shuttle 'Discovery' docked at the International Space Station (ISS) in the most Kubrick year possible, 2001.
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