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Written by NASA: Music to Wake Up By

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I don’t remember how I discovered the original NASA Wake Up calls history compiled by Colin Fries in the NASA history division. But! I did know the wake-up call was a ‘thing’.

A memory of a movie set in space maybe? Someone famous singing to a crew bound to go into history… a Bruce Willis type? Sandra Bullock? Tom Hanks? The singer/songwriter on the ground someone equally famous: a Beatle? A Rolling Stone? A Beyonce? It may just have been something I read in the Right Stuff once.

The surprise to me was finding this record. A history, incomplete, yet so comprehensive, more so than anything out there that we could possibly imagine.

The history, to my eyes, is lovingly put together. It covers as many missions and programs as information could be gleamed for. Those who want to play along at home can find NASA’s links to mission pages, or video of that streamed at the time. The chronology discusses the first ever song that could be found Hello Dolly. And goes right up to Paul McCartney playing live for 14 minutes for the crew of STS-121; and beyond into the cold Martian mornings where the tradition continued for the Spirit and Opportunity Rovers.

The only thing is, all of this rich history, and its beautiful narrative was locked up in a PDF file. I know there’s a version out there on the NASA servers written in Word 2013 but it’s not ‘data’. Data that is easy to update might be a +1 for the NASA history division. Data that is easy to remix is a +1 for everyone out there looking at this site and its links and imagining the possibilities of doing neat things with it.

As a fan of music, a digital preservation flâneur, an MA in digital humanities and a fan of Space, and NASA, I fell in love with this small 89-page document the moment I saw it.

I have turned it into data in the hope that y’all can turn it into something more, or even, just to unlock more gems of information from it than maybe was possible before. I have found so many lovely bits of information while producing this ‘data-edit’.

How many times was Bruce Springsteen or Talking Heads played out there in outer-space? What was the last piece of music played on the last Apollo mission? Was the Reveille bugle call the most played song in the last 54 years?

Most importantly! (to me!) What do all of these songs sound like played back-to-back? (I am working on that!)

I also turned it into data so that maybe even NASA can pick this up and make it even more complete one-day, with even more missions.

Thank you NASA. Thank you so much Colin Fries. Please enjoy the output of a this remix.

Introduction, by Colin Fries

(From the original 89 page history CHRONOLOGY OF WAKEUP CALLS (2015)

The idea for the Wakeup Call chronology arose as a result of my dual interests in the history of music and the space program. I discovered as soon as I began working as an archivist at the NASA History Office that there was no complete list of these calls sent from Mission Control. There have always been inquiries about flown items and mission events as we all know, and those about wakeup calls and music played in space encompassed a steady stream (no pun intended)! And NASA’s Web pages did provide audio for these calls beginning with STS-85 with the note that: “Wakeup calls are a longstanding tradition of the NASA program” – yet nothing on when it started. One of the most frequent inquiries was and still is – What was the first wakeup call? (I later learned that it was “Hello Dolly” sent during Gemini 6). So with the blessing of the history staff I began compiling a chronology using the sources in the NASA Historical Reference Collection here at NASA Headquarters. The Space Shuttle portion of the Chronology proved to be the most challenging since the Johnson Space Center Audio Control Room Recorder Log began with STS-80. In 2005, I was able to visit JSC Public Affairs and make copies from their query books to fill in the gap. Still there were Space Shuttle wakeup calls, even entire missions, that remained elusive. The other sources that I used are listed at the end of this PDF. Please excuse omissions, incorrect dates, or even totally wrong entries due to the patchwork nature of the data that I drew from. We welcome input to improve the accuracy of the list. We just ask that you provide a verifiable source. The excerpts that immediately follow were chosen as excellent explanations for the rationale that led to the tradition. Since the retirement of the Space Shuttle fleet it is on hiatus but it may be revived when NASA’s Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle is operational, or when commercial craft are flying on a regular basis.

Colin Fries

Appropriate to the occasion…

Use of music to awaken astronauts on space missions dates back at least to the Apollo Program, when astronauts returning from the Moon were serenaded by their colleagues in mission control with lyrics from popular songs that seemed appropriate to the occasion…Several crews have awakened on their final day in space to Dean Martin’s popular song “Going Back to Houston.”

The common element of all these selections is that they promote a sense of camaraderie and esprit de corps among the astronauts and ground support personnel. That, in fact, is the sole reason for having wake-up music; and it is the reason that NASA management has neither attempted to dictate its content nor allowed outside interests to influence the process.

From a letter from Lynn W. Heninger, Acting Assistant Administrator for Congressional Relations to Congressman Robert H. Michel - January 9, 1990

CAPCOM vs. Manilow…

Aboard the space shuttle Discovery, astronaut Steve Robinson once used a 50-foot Japanese robotic arm to snare a four-ton satellite. But Robinson’s greatest professional challenge came on the ground. Last June, while working at mission control, he was charged with playing wake-up music for another shuttle crew. One astronaut’s wife made him promise to play Barry Manilow’s schmaltzy ballad “A Little Traveling Music, Please,” and Robinson’s flight director – the mission control center’s big boss – insisted he play the rousing U.S. Air Force theme instead. A delicate decision.

“So I played ‘em back-to-back. I thought they would cancel each other out,” says Robinson tactfully. “The only complaints were from the navy guys on the crew. But I’m not sure if they were complaining about the air force song or Barry Manilow.” Think of the space shuttle as a high-tech road trip with a difference: You can’t get out until the trip is over, pot and beer are forbidden, and 125 miles straight down, somebody who isn’t even traveling with you gets to pick what’s on the tape deck. That’s often Chris Hadfield, chief mission control CAPCOM (capsule communicator), who oversees little details like wake-up music, which is broadcast on an intercom-type system with small speakers on the upper and lower decks of the shuttle.

“You play some lively, peppy bit of music – normally just two minutes of it – and after a pause, you hear some groggy voice on the microphone mumbling, ‘Good morning, Houston,’” Hadfield explains. “You don’t want to play a dirge or something uninspiring. You want to get them going in the morning.” Consequently, the selections are usually benign – it’s considered poor form, and possibly dangerous, to freak out a sleeping astronaut with Rob Zombie or Eminem. But the DJs at mission control have been known to exhibit a mischievous streak. Once, to the crew’s sleepy confusion, Hadfield chose the booming half-U2 version of the Mission: Impossible theme. The 1965 Gemini VI mission was one of the first to include onboard music. Those brave astronauts got “Hello, Dolly!,” as sung by clean-cut crooner Jack Jones. For the Apollo II moon mission, flight director Eugene F. Kranz psyched himself up with John Philip Sousa marches. In 1972, the Apollo 17 crew heard the Carpenters’ “We’ve Only Just Begun.” The cheese subsided somewhat with the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, the first U.S.-Soviet manned space flight: That crew woke to the strains of Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother.” Since then, more anthemic fare has prevailed: the theme from Rocky (1984), “Bohemian Rhapsody” (1989), and the Star Wars theme (1993). The ‘93 Columbia shuttle mission had better luck with hip reveilles including the Thompson Twins’ “Doctor! Doctor!” and R.E.M. ‘s “Shiny Happy People.” (It would be a different playlist if DJs did a set at mission control. Moby told Details he would play the Clash’s six-gunning version of “I Fought the Law,” and a little Bach or Hendrix. Master mixologist Armand Van Helden would spin Steve Miller’s “Fly Like an Eagle” [what, no “Space Cowboy”?] and David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” Mr. Space Oddity himself would choose Steve Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians.”)

Because in space no one can hear you scream, “Turn that Crap down!,” personal CD players and headphones help fly guys maintain their sanity.

For his space-shuttle mission last year – the one with Senator John Glenn, who preselected Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” as the wake-up call – astronaut Steve Robinson brought 20 discs. While riding an exercise bike on the lower level, Robinson listened to electric-blues guitarists Albert King and Stevie Ray Vaughan. While staring literally into space, he chose a musician friend’s version of Pachelbel’s Canon. He fell asleep to Chris Isaak. “It’s one of the most personal things that you’re able to take up in space. Wherever your music is, that’s sort of a version of home,” says Robinson. Both Robinson and Hadfield belong to a 12-year-old, all-astronaut, Houston-based rock ‘n’ roll quartet known as Max-Q, whose rotating members cover bash-it-out standards like “Louie Louie.” Named after an aerodynamics term for “maximum dynamic pressure,” the band has yet to release any albums but occasionally plays NASA functions. In 1993, they woke up the Discovery crew with a cover of “Heartbreak Hotel.”

Such musical experience comes in handy in space – especially if you believe in cross-cultural exchanges. Four years ago, preparing for a shuttle mission to the Mir space station, Hadfield knew he would encounter Thomas Reiter, a German astronaut and accomplished classical guitarist. He also knew earlier Mir astronauts had left a beat-up acoustic for future crews – which, he surmised, Reiter wouldn’t appreciate. So Hadfield had a company modify an electric guitar, making it lighter than usual and foldable to fit his luggage. United on Mir, 250 miles above the Earth, Hadfield and Reiter sang Beatles songs and Russian folk ballads. Air guitar, says Hadfield, was never quite like this: “It’s great floating weightless going around the world, playing guitar.”

On the way back from Mir, Hadfield set his CD player for the Celtic weeper “Danny Boy,” his favorite song ever, and watched the stars go by. The experience gave “Headphone music” a whole new meaning. “There are certain stanzas of music, certain harmonies, certain lyrics, which sometimes just send a warm rush up your backbone,” Hadfield says. “And you get that almost continuously up there.” And to think that we here down on Earth thought Barry Manilow couldn’t possibly sound any better.

What do astronauts listen to in outer space? Details tracks the sounds of the final frontier Details, January 2000 By Steve Knopper

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The NASA History Division list the following details for more information about the original chronology: