MUMBAI: British pop icon David Bowie’s classic ‘Space Oddity’ aptly became the song for the first music video made in space.
Mustached Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield’s cover of Bowie’s song about a lost astronaut to mark his upcoming departure from the International Space Station (ISS) has become a YouTube hit with more than 2,00,000 views.
Hadfield’s voice and guitar solos were recorded on the station although the backing track was compiled by a team on Earth, report said.
The video has Hadfield and his acoustic guitar floating around the space station, Hadfield sing, playing the guitar and shots of the Blue planet-earth from the space station.
Hadfield, who become a global star during his half-year stint on the ISS with regular and sometimes quirky postings on Twitter, is due to touch down back on Earth early Tuesday 14 May in Kazakhstan aboard a Russian Soyuz-TMA capsule along with Russia’s Roman Romanenko and NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn, report said.
“With deference to the genius of David Bowie, here’s Space Oddity, recorded on Station. A last glimpse of the World,” Hadfield wrote on Twitter to introduce the song.
The video provides a fitting climax to Hadfield’s six-month mission to the ISS which has shown him use social media more effectively than anyone in the history of space travel.
Hadfield has won over 800,000 followers on Twitter with spectacular photos and videos from the station and also insights into daily life in orbit.
As commander of the station, he oversaw a dramatic spacewalk at the weekend performed by Americans Marshburn and Chris Cassidy to halt an ammonia leak.