NASA has made public the playlist of wake-up songs chosen by the Artemis II crew for their mornings in deep space, offering a lighter window into one of the most historically significant lunar missions since the Apollo era.
The list, posted on NASA's official account, so far includes eight tracks selected by commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen. Among them are Chapel Roan's "Pink Pony Club," Young and Sick's "Sleepyhead," "Tokyo Drifting" by Glass Animals and Denzel Curry, and "Under Pressure" by Queen and David Bowie.
The tradition of wake-up songs stretches back to the Apollo programme, when mission control would play music to rouse the crew at the start of each day. NASA has revived the custom for Artemis II, the first crewed mission beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972.
Artemis II launched on 1 April and completed a trajectory around the far side of the Moon over a total mission duration of ten days. During the flight, NASA also released new images of the spacecraft as it made its pass around the lunar surface.
Beyond the playlist, the mission carries considerable historical weight. Glover became the first Black astronaut to travel to the Moon, Koch the first woman, and Hansen the first non-American on a lunar mission. Together, the four-person crew also travelled farther from Earth than any humans in history, covering a total journey of approximately 694,000 miles.
Splashdown and a successful return
The mission concluded on 10 April when the Orion spacecraft, named Integrity by the crew, splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego at 8:07pm Eastern Time, right on schedule. Mission control called it "a perfect bullseye splashdown." During the final descent, the capsule re-entered the atmosphere at speeds approaching 25,000 miles per hour, enduring temperatures of around 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit before a sequence of parachutes slowed it to under 20 miles per hour for splashdown. A six-minute communications blackout during re-entry, caused by the intense heat building up around the spacecraft, was among the most tense moments of the return. Commander Wiseman radioed mission control in the final minutes before re-entry: "We got a great view of the Moon out window 2 - looks a little smaller than yesterday."
The crew were extracted from the capsule by divers and hoisted by helicopter to the USS John P. Murtha, where they underwent medical evaluations. Engineers will now examine key data from the mission, including the performance of the Orion heat shield, navigation systems and life-support technology, all of which are essential for the missions that follow. Artemis II is widely regarded as a critical test flight paving the way for Artemis III, currently scheduled for 2027, which aims to land astronauts on the lunar surface for the first time since the Apollo era.
During their journey, the crew reported vivid observations of the lunar surface and witnessed a solar eclipse from beyond the Moon. Pilot Victor Glover said the eclipse was the highlight of the mission for him. "We saw great simulations made by our lunar science team, but when that actually happened, it just blew us all away," he said.
The playlist, in the end, gives Artemis II something that no amount of engineering data can: somewhere between the mission's most critical technical tests, four astronauts woke up to pop, rock and hip-hop, carrying a very ordinary sense of everyday life all the way to the Moon and back.
Sources: NASA, Al Jazeera, CBS News, Space.com