WASHINGTON, May 13 (RIA Novosti) – There are goodbyes. And then, there’s the signoff from space by Canadian astronaut and outgoing International Space Station (ISS) Commander Chris Hadfield, who recorded the first music video in space (see below) while floating in zero gravity, strumming an acoustic guitar and crooning his own rendition of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” as a special farewell before heading back to Earth Monday.
The lyrics – tweaked a bit here and there – are particularly fitting:
Ground control to Major Tom
Lock your Soyuz hatch and put your helmet on
Ground control to Major Tom
Commencing countdown, engines on
Detach from station and may God’s love be with you
Hadfield launched from Kazakhstan as part of Expedition 35 on December 19, 2012, and took command of the ISS on March 13. Since then, he’s found time to tweet to more than 800,000 followers, share photos of the galaxy, and wow fans with cool videos of playing guitar and cooking spinach in space.
His video of wringing out a washcloth in zero gravity quickly went viral, netting more than five million views in the days after it was posted.
In short, he’s made space travel cool.
He tweeted about the video in announcing its release on Sunday.
With deference to the genius of David Bowie, here's Space Oddity, recorded on Station. A last glimpse of the World. youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9d…
— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) May 12, 2013
And got a reply from Bowie a short time later.
CHRIS HADFIELD SINGS SPACE ODDITY IN SPACE!“Hallo Spaceboy...”Commander Chris Hadfield, currently on... fb.me/24sZNW5ly
— David Bowie Official (@DavidBowieReal) May 12, 2013
Hadfield turned over control of the space station to Russian Pavel Vinogradov on Sunday, and is scheduled to return to Earth and land in Kazakhstan at 10:31 p.m. EDT Monday (0231 GMT Tuesday).
“Who’d have thought that five months away from the planet would you make you feel closer to people,” Hadfield said, in a video about his journey.
The music video is interspersed with shots of the ISS orbiting the Earth and Hadfield floating inside the capsule singing and playing the guitar, and was produced with help from the Canadian Space Agency and Canadian musician Emm Gryner, who played with Bowie’s band.
