:salam2:
Hip-hop musician will.i.am’s “Reach for the Stars” officially became the first song broadcast from Mars today, thanks to a signal beamed from NASA’s Curiosity rover. “This is the first time that a song’s ever come from another planet,” Leland Melvin, NASA’s associate administrator for education and a former astronaut, told students at an educational event at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
**How the song got started
**
Will.i.am said the Mars Curiosity project had its genesis in “i.am.FIRST,” an ABC-TV special on robotics and science education that he helped fund for broadcast last year. As a result of the success of that program, Bolden asked will.i.am to become involved in NASA’s educational outreach program, and in response, the musician asked whether the space agency had anything special coming up.
“He said, ‘We have a rocket going to Mars,’” will.i.am recalled. “So I said, ‘Hey, have you ever thought about putting a song on the rocket, so when the rocket lands, the song comes back to Earth?’ That’s never happened before. So he said, ‘Who’s gonna do the song?’ I said, ‘Are you serious? Damn!’”
The musician said he intentionally went with an orchestral sound (with a 40-piece ensemble) instead of the usual hip-hop or dance beat. “I didn’t want to do a song that was done on a computer,” he said. “I wanted to show human collaboration … and something that would be timeless, and translated in different cultures.” Will.i.am said the point of the song wasn’t just about spaceflight.
“It’s a reminder that anything is possible if you discipline yourself, and dedicate yourself and stand for something,” he said. “Every single person that’s a part of NASA stood for something, and we have this wonderful technology — the phone you have in your hand, and small computers. If it wasn’t for their discipline and their relentless research and efforts, we wouldn’t have these small computers. We don’t have to just end up in the 'hood. But it’s a hard thing. The hardest thing is discipline. Everything else is easy.”
I wonder what will be next ‘broadcast’ from Mars :hmmm:
