SpaceX astronauts listen to AC/DC and Black Sabbath classics during historic mission
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Last updated 31st May 2020
Astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken listened to AC/DC’s classic track ‘Back In Black’ immediately prior to the historic SpaceX launch on Saturday night (30th May).
SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft launched from Florida's Kennedy Space Center on Saturday and made history as it was the first-ever manned space launch by a private company in the United States.
It was also the first time astronauts have gone into space from American soil since the retirement of the US space agency (NASA) shuttles nine years ago.
Quoting her colleague John Berman who was covering the SpaceX launch on Saturday, CNN’s Caroline Kenny tweeted: "We were told the astronauts listened to 'Back in Black' from AC/DC on their way to the rocket. In that vein let's just say, for those about to launch, we salute you."
Veteran NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken created their own three-song playlist for their journey to the Dragon spacecraft – alongside ‘Back in Black’ they played ‘The Girl from Ipanema’ from the seminal 1980 movie The Blues Brothers, and a French horn version of the US national anthem ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’.
As NASA revealed in a blog post, Hurley and Behnken received their wake-up call at 4:45 a.m. (EDT) today (31st May) - 9.45am UK time - with Black Sabbath's 1970 opus 'Planet Caravan'.
Following a 19-hour journey, Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley successfully disembarked the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule and entered the International Space Station shortly after 3pm today (UK time).
Their Dragon capsule attached to the bow section of the orbiting space laboratrory 422km above China.
Earlier this month, a spoof AC/DC song called 'Great Balls' was created using artificial intelligence. You can find out more about that story right here.
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