article_detail

The European Space Agency (ESA) is marking a special anniversary this month with a unique celebration that’s truly out of this world. On May 31, a live performance of Johann Strauss II’s famous waltz The Blue Danube will be beamed from Spain into deep space.

 

Often considered the quintessential space anthem, The Blue Danube was immortalised as the soundtrack to the elegant space docking scene in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Now, more than half a century later, the same music will travel far beyond our Solar System thanks to ESA and the Vienna Tourist Board.

 

The waltz, made up of 13,743 individual notes, will be performed live at the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) in Vienna by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Petr Popelka. From there, the music will be transmitted using ESA’s 35-metre satellite dish based in Cebreros in Spain’s Ávila.

 

This event marks the 20th anniversary of the Cebreros station, which plays a crucial role in supporting ESA’s missions. It provides over 500 hours of spacecraft connection every month and has been involved in missions including Rosetta, Mars Express, Juice and NASA’s Perseverance rover.

 

ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher said, “Music connects us all across time and space in a very special way. The European Space Agency is delighted to share the stage with Johann Strauss II and spark the imaginations of future scientists and space explorers who may one day travel to the sound of this space anthem.”

 

Norbert Kettner, director of the Vienna Tourist Board, said, “Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey turned the Danube Waltz into the anthem of space. The absence of this most famous waltz of all on the 1977 Voyager Golden Record is a cosmic mistake that we correct with ‘Waltz into Space’.”

 

The Voyager 1 space probe, currently more than 25 billion kilometres from Earth, is the most distant human-made object in existence. Thanks to this new mission, Strauss’s music will soon be travelling alongside it through interstellar space.

 

 

Image: Arek Socha/Pixabay