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Colonel Chris Hadfield recently recorded the first original song written for and performed on the International Space Station. He joins a long and venerable tradition of astromusicians.

Astronaut Chris Hadfield plays Christmas carols while orbiting over the Mediterranean. (@Cmdr_Hadfield/Twitter)

Astronaut Chris Hadfield has a new song out, a sweet Christmas melody laid over some solid guitar strumming. But if you listen carefully, you'll hear something else: a soft whir of fans in the background. Why? Because this song wasn't recorded in the constructed silence of a recording studio, but on the International Space Station as it orbited Earth at about 17,000 miles per hour, some 260 miles overhead.

It seems that this is the first song written specifically for the International Space Station to be recorded there. But that's a pretty specific accomplishment -- and that's because humans have been playing music in space for about five decades. The first song we have a recording of from space was also a Christmas tune, this one a bit better known: Jingle Bells. Astronauts Walter M. Schirra Jr. and Thomas P. Stafford snuck some bells and a harmonica (now housed at the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum) onto Gemini 6 in 1965. As they prepared to re-enter Earth's atmosphere on December 16, they played a little joke on those listening down below.

The prank, captured in the video below, is a little hard to make out verbatim, but Schirra's later recollections give the joke's flavor. He wrote: "We have an object, looks like a satellite going from north to south, probably in polar orbit.... Looks like he might be going to re-enter soon.... You just might let me pick up that thing.... I see a command module and eight smaller modules in front. The pilot of the command module is wearing a red suit." And then they began to play:

Stafford told Smithsonian Magazine in 2005 that it was Schirra who originally came up with the idea. "He could play the harmonica, and we practiced two or three times before we took off, but of course we didn't tell the guys on the ground....We never considered singing, since I couldn't carry a tune in a bushelbasket."

It seems that no one heard the recording of that moment -- the first musical instruments played in space, according to Margaret A. Weitekamp, a curator at the Air and Space Museum -- for decades, but last year a YouTube user by the name buzzlab, and identified by Boing Boing as "Patrick," ferreted it out of NASA's Media Resource Center in Houston, Texas, which provided him with 33 hours of audio files from the mission with a note that promised, "It's in there somewhere."

On the International Space Station and Mir, where astronauts have lived for long periods and therefore have had more leisure time, instruments have been fixtures of space-station living. On a space station, NASA explains, the instruments don't sound any different, but they are all thoroughly checked to make sure they will not threaten the safety of the astronauts (if they were to, say, emit some noxious gases, or perhaps combust). Astronauts have to adapt to playing without gravity, figuring out clever ways of holding themselves in place while they strum or tap the keys.

Over the years of space-station living, there have been many firsts: Cosmonaut Yuri Romanenko wrote 20 songs while living on Mir in the late '80s, though it seems he did not record them there. Hadfield brought a modified, foldable electric guitar to Mir in the '90s, and he and astro-guitarist Thomas Reiter used it to play Russian folk ballads and Beatles songs. Several astronauts haveschleppedkeyboards with them (such as Carl Walz, pictured at right);Don Petit turned a vacuum tube into a workable didgeridoo;and two astronauts, Cady Coleman and Ellen Ochoa, have both brought flutes with them into space. In 2011, a recording of Coleman playing Bach's Bouree was merged with another from Ian Anderson, of Jethro Tull, for the first ever Earth-space duet.

But there is one first that was planned and never happened, and that story is a reminder of the tough path that space exploration has sometimes been. And that is the story of Ron McNair, who was the first person to bring an instrument into space (not counting the bells and harmonica of the Gemini pranksters). In 1984 he brought his saxophone with him on a shuttle mission. The tape of that music was sadly recorded over.

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A Brief History of Musical Firsts in Space

Jewel in the Night: Astronaut #39;s 1st Song in Space | Video
Tune in to hear Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield #39;s first original song recorded on the International Space Station: "Jewel in the Night."From:VideoFromSpaceViews:5 3ratingsTime:03:02More inScience Technology

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Jewel in the Night: Astronaut's 1st Song in Space | Video - Video

Colonel Chris Hadfield recently recorded the first original song written for and performed on the International Space Station. He joins a long and venerable tradition of astromusicians.

Astronaut Chris Hadfield plays Christmas carols while orbiting over the Mediterranean. (@Cmdr_Hadfield/Twitter)

Astronaut Chris Hadfield has a new song out, a sweet Christmas melody laid over some solid guitar strumming. But if you listen carefully, you'll hear something else: a soft whir of fans in the background. Why? Because this song wasn't recorded in the constructed silence of a recording studio, but on the International Space Station as it orbited Earth at about 17,000 miles per hour, some 260 miles overhead.

It seems that this is the first song written specifically for the International Space Station to be recorded there. But that's a pretty specific accomplishment -- and that's because humans have been playing music in space for about five decades. The first song we have a recording of from space was also a Christmas tune, this one a bit better known: Jingle Bells. Astronauts Walter M. Schirra Jr. and Thomas P. Stafford snuck some bells and a harmonica (now housed at the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum) onto Gemini 6 in 1965. As they prepared to re-enter Earth's atmosphere on December 16, they played a little joke on those listening down below.

The prank, captured in the video below, is a little hard to make out verbatim, but Schirra's later recollections give the joke's flavor. He wrote: "We have an object, looks like a satellite going from north to south, probably in polar orbit.... Looks like he might be going to re-enter soon.... You just might let me pick up that thing.... I see a command module and eight smaller modules in front. The pilot of the command module is wearing a red suit." And then they began to play:

Stafford told Smithsonian Magazine in 2005 that it was Schirra who originally came up with the idea. "He could play the harmonica, and we practiced two or three times before we took off, but of course we didn't tell the guys on the ground....We never considered singing, since I couldn't carry a tune in a bushelbasket."

It seems that no one heard the recording of that moment-- the first musical instruments played in space, according to Margaret A. Weitekamp, a curator at the Air and Space Museum -- for decades, but last year a YouTube user by the name buzzlab, and identified by Boing Boing as "Patrick," ferreted it out of NASA's Media Resource Center in Houston Texas, who provided him with 33 hours of audio files from the mission with a note that promised, "It's in there somewhere."

On the International Space Station and Mir, where astronauts have lived for long periods and therefore have had more leisure time, instruments have been fixtures of space-station living. On a space station, NASA explains, the instruments don't sound any different, but they are all thoroughly checked to make sure they will not threaten the safety of the astronauts (if they were to, say, emit some noxious gases, or perhaps combust). Astronauts too have to adapt to playing without gravity, figuring out clever ways of holding themselves in place while they strum or tap the keys.

Over the years of space-station living there have been many firsts: Cosmonaut Yuri Romanenko wrote 20 songs while living on Mir in the late '80s though it seems he did not record them there. Hadfield brought a modified, foldable electric guitar to Mir in the '90s, and he and astro-guitarist Thomas Reiter used to play Russian folk ballads and Beatles songs. Several astronauts have shlepped keyboards with them (such as Carl Walz, pictured at right), Don Petit turned a vacuum tube into a workable didgeridoo, and two astronauts, Cady Coleman and Ellen Ochoa, have both brought flutes with them into space. In 2011, recording of Coleman playing Bach's Bouree was merged with another from Ian Anderson, of Jethro Tull, for the first ever Earth-space duet.

But there is one first that was planned and never happened, and that story is a reminder of the tough path that space exploration has sometimes been. And that is the story of Ron McNair, who was the first person to bring an instrument into space (not counting the bells and harmonica of the Gemini pranksters). In 1984 he brought his saxophone with him on a shuttle mission. The tape of that music was sadly recorded over.

Read this article:
A Brief History of Making Music in Space

Christmas in orbit might not look exactly like the holidays on Earth, but the astronauts living on the International Space Station this holiday season try to make the orbiting science laboratory as homey as possible.

The six members of the station's Expedition 34 crew, three of whom just arrived last week, will all be spending Christmas and New Years Day aboard the spacecraft, but that doesn't mean they don't get to celebrate. Hundreds of miles above the Earth's surface, the spaceflyers will eat, exchange gifts, and be merry during Christmas and when welcoming in the New Year.

The space station crew will be off duty for both Christmas Eve and Christmas. That means that they won't need to work on any of the 110 experiments aboard the station, and they can take as much time for meals as they want, NASA spokeswoman Nicole Cloutier-Lamasters told SPACE.com.

The space station residents have a few different decorating options available to them. An earlier expedition left the crewmembers a Christmas tree and stockings made from nomex, a flame resistant fiber that's safe to stow onboard. [Holidays in Space: Astronaut Photo Album]

The week before Christmas was an eventful one for the orbital crew as well. Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield, NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn, and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko arrived on Friday (Dec. 21), joining Kevin Ford of NASA, and cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin to fill out the $100 billion science laboratory to its usual 6-person capacity.

The spaceflyers also have some presents to look forward to. The Progress 48 cargo freighter a robotic Russian supply ship that launched in early August of this year carried more than just basic supplies to the ISS. The Progress also brought holiday presents for the spaceflyers who'd be spending Yuletide in space.

As well as a traditional meal complete with turkey and candied yams, the crewmembers will also get the chance to video conference with their families. This is a particular treat because video chatting is usually possible only once a week, and involves a lot of planning for mission control and the spaceflyers.

Despite NASA's best efforts to make the holidays in space as warm as they are on Earth, that doesn't mean astronauts won't get homesick.

Marshburn, for example, has a 10-year-old daughter.

"That'll be tough, thinking about her waking up in the morning, enjoying things," said Marshburn during a preflight interview with NASA, "but the fact is we've got some technology that'll allow me, hopefully through an internet or I guess an internet protocol session, to be able to join in with them and see their faces and they can see me. It'll be a little tough for me, as it would be for anybody, but I think the price is certainly well worth it, to be up there."

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Astronauts Celebrate Christmas on Space Station