Alongside its serious objectives, like testing the Orion capsule in deep space and imaging lava flow remnants on the lunar surface, NASA's Artemis 2 lunar mission has its whimsy, too.
For example, there is a beloved moon toy named "Rise" on the mission serving as a zero-gravity indicator and holding a microchip with the names of space fans who signed up to have their presence enter the lunar arena. There are also the "wakeup songs," a tradition carried on from previous crewed missions. These are exactly what you'd expect. Each day, at the designated wakeup time for the Artemis 2 crew, Mission Control radios in to Orion and plays a short snippet of a song to help them start their day with positivity.
The tunes so far include a cover of Passion Pit's "Sleepyhead" by the artist Young & Sick, "In a Daydream" by Freddy Jones Band and Chappell Roan's "Pink Pony Club," which hilariously led to some sass from the crew because Mission Control turned it off before the main part. "We were all eagerly awaiting the chorus," Artemis 2 commander Reid Wiseman said. So, in order to follow along, we made a Spotify playlist of the Artemis 2 mission soundtrack. We'll keep updating this article as we get more wakeup song reveals.
Here are the songs so far:
Flight Day 1: "Sleepyhead" by Young & Sick
Flight Day 2: "Green Light" by John Legend (feat. André 3000)
Flight Day 3: "In a Daydream" by Freddy Jones Band
Flight Day 4: "Pink Pony Club" by Chappell Roan
Flight Day 5: "Working Class Heroes (Work)" by CeeLo Green
Flight Day 6: "Good Morning" by Mandisa, TobyMac
Astronaut wakeup calls go back to the Apollo years. For instance, the Apollo 10 astronauts had the song "It's Nice to Go Trav'ling" by Frank Sinatra as one of their wakeup calls, and Apollo 15 had the theme song from "2001: A Space Odyssey."
The space shuttle program had tons of wakeup calls of their own. For example, STS-134 Pilot Greg Johnson's son chose "Drops of Jupiter" to play for his dad during that 2011 mission — to which Johnson said, "I love that song, and I love being in space," before apologizing for missing his son's birthday. That same mission, the second-to-last of the shuttle program, also had "Il Mio Pensiero," performed by Ligabue for mission specialist Roberto Vittori.
During the final space shuttle mission, STS-135, Pilot Doug Hurley selected Coldplay's "Viva la Vida" to be played (and later picked "Don't Panic" for another day). R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe also personally sent an a capella version of "Man on the Moon" for the crew.
An in-depth list of these wakeup songs can be found in this document, which also features some of the cute and, yes, whimsical banter between astronauts and Mission Control. What a lovely tradition.
