Let’s talk about music on the moon. There have been developments.
Traffic is heavy heading to the moon with both space agencies and private companies trying to land probes. Others are approaching things differently. Let’s start with the successful one.
Massive Attack sent their cover of “Everything is Going to Plan,” a 1988 song by a Russian punk band called Grob into space. They were part of an art project that also included The Avalanches, Pussy Riot, Moses Boyd, and few more. The exhibition, part of Art After Dark: Picadilly Un:Plugged, sent music to the moon and back using what they called “Earth-Moon-Earth Technology.” The songs were beamed and received at the Lovell Telescope in Cheshire, England. The returned recordings will be altered in some way that creates “an otherworldly soundscape that connects Earth with the cosmos.”
Meanwhile, Imagine Dragons tried to something from the moon itself. A company called Lonestar Data Holdings had plans to put the first data centre on the moon. Aboard the spacecraft was gear designed to play “Children of Earth” back to us once it landed safely. This would have made Imagine Dragons the first band to broadcast from the moon.
Well, no. The Athena probe touched down on March 6. Yay! Unfortunately, it landed 820 feet from its landing target and then fell over. No Imagine Dragons broadcast.
This wasn’t the first time music was sent into space on a probe. Blur was aboard the European Space Agency’s Beagle 2 spacecraft to Mars in 2003, but it, too, had a hard landing. Nothing was ever heard of Blur from Mars.
And then last year, a probe called Odysseus landed successfully on the moon with a hard drive that contained recordings of Elvis Presley, Marvin Gaye, Santana, Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry, Sly & the Family Stone, Bob Marley, Janis Joplin, The Who, and others. For whatever reason, though, none of this music was every broadcast back to earth following a successful touchdown.
So the honour of being the first act to broadcast music from the moon is still open. Any takers?
