Still from Space Oddity by Chris Hadfield on YouTube
Former International Space Station (ISS) commander Chris Hadfield, who will make his return journey to Earth today, has recorded a fitting tribute to his time aboard the ISS, creating the first music video ever filmed in space.
Hadfield’s revised version of David Bowie’s Space Oddity features vocals and music recorded on Earth with a piano arrangement by Emm Gryner. Joe Corcoran produced and mixed the cover song, and the accompanying video – shot on board the ISS – was edited by Andrew Tidby and produced by Hadfield’s son Evan.
Hadfield’s tweet following the upload of the video yesterday has already been retweeted close to 14,000 times and favourited more than 6,000 times. The video itself, posted to Hadfield’s own YouTube channel, had already received more than half-a-million views at the time of writing.
Hadfield offers special thanks to NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, ROSCOSMOS and, of course, David Bowie in the video’s credits.
On the eve of his journey home, Hadfield reflected on the mission in a separate video posted by the Canadian Space Agency.
His feelings were also summed up via a tweet from his personal account.
During his time as commander of the ISS, Hadfield shared spectacular photos from space on Twitter and Facebook and Google+, and has used YouTube videos to teach us all about what it’s like to live in zero gravity.
Space Oddity is not the Canadian astronaut’s first musical venture from space, either. On Christmas Eve last year he uploaded Jewel in the Night, an original song recorded aboard the ISS and accompanied by a slideshow of images. He also led a Canada-wide singalong of the song ‘I.S.S. (Is Somebody Singing)’ last week for Music Monday, an annual event by Canada’s Coalition for Music Education. Hadfield co-wrote the track with Barenaked Ladies frontman Ed Robertson.
Hadfield, the first Canadian to command the ISS, handed over the role to crewmate Pavel Vinogradov yesterday. He will begin his journey home to Earth today, landing at 3.31am IST near Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, along with fellow crew members Tom Marshburn and Roman Romanenko. A webcast of their return will begin at 2.30am.
