Ned Potter is the science correspondent for ABC's "World News with Diane Sawyer." He has reported on such topics as space exploration, the human genome and climate change.
December 16, 2010 4:35 PM Just a bit of space trivia: It was 45 years ago today, on Dec. 16, 1965, that astronauts played the first song from orbit.
It's not a big deal. The Russians had already launched the first man into space and the first woman, and the first footsteps on the moon were less than four years away.
That would be a very big deal. To that end, two American spacecraft, Gemini 6 and Gemini 7, had just performed the first rendezvous in orbit -- something pretty remarkable because it is no small matter for two ships, whizzing along at 17,500 mph in the near-vacuum 150 miles up, to fly formation six feet apart. Apollo astronauts would have to do it in order to return from the moon to their command ship in lunar orbit.
So on Dec. 15, 1965, astronauts Wally Schirra and Tom Stafford, in Gemini 6, used the orbiting Gemini 7 as a target for practice. They launched from Cape Canaveral and caught up with Frank Borman and Jim Lovell after four orbits.
The next day, before returning to earth, Schirra and Stafford pulled a little stunt. Here's how Schirra, the resident prankster among the original seven astronauts, described it in his autobiography, "Schirra's Space:"
"Houston, this is Gemini 6."
"Roger, Gemini 6," Capcom Elliot See responded.
"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."
On that cue, they played "Jingle Bells" on a harmonica and set of bells they'd smuggled on board. Schirra once said, "Levity is appropriate in a dangerous trade."
Hat tip to Russell Goldman of our staff, who noticed a post about this on BoingBoing. One person there commented that the mechanical beep-beep-beep of Sputnik 1 in 1957 was perhaps, in its way, a much earlier song.
(NASA image: Gemini 7 as seen from Gemini 6, Dec. 15, 1965. Click to enlarge.)
December 16, 2010 in Adventure, Books, History, Space, Technology | Permalink | Share | User Comments (0) User CommentsPost a comment