Missy Elliott can officially boast having the first ever hip-hop song beamed into space. Add it to the shelf with all those Grammys, Hall of Fame inductions, and tens of millions of record sales, huh?
Lyrics from the queen of rap’s “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” — her iconic debut solo single from 1997 — were transmitted about 158 million miles (254 million kilometres) away from Earth to Venus on Friday at 10:05 a.m. PT. And according to NASA, it took just 14 minutes to get there, travelling at the speed of light.
The song was sent by the space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, through the space agency’s large telecommunication service, the Deep Space Network (DSN). It was physically transmitted by the DSN’s colossal DSS-13 radio dish antenna (nicknamed Venus, what?) at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex near Barstow.
Elliott, who is (fittingly) currently on her Out of This World tour, celebrated the moment on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday.
“My song ‘The Rain’ has officially been transmitted all the way to Venus, the planet that symbolizes strength, beauty and empowerment,” she wrote, “The sky is not the limit, it’s just the beginning 👽👽”
It’s the second song NASA has beamed into space using the DSN, following The Beatles’ “Across the Universe” which embodied exactly that in 2008.
The collaboration with Elliot was pitched by Brittany Brown, director of the Digital and Technology Division at NASA HQ’s Office of Communications in Washington. “Both space exploration and Missy Elliott’s art have been about pushing boundaries,” said Brown in a press statement. “Missy has a track record of infusing space-centric storytelling and futuristic visuals in her music videos, so the opportunity to collaborate on something out of this world is truly fitting.”
Part of NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program, the DSN uses its massive antennas to send radio signals into deep space. It’s made for communicating with spacecrafts, tracking missions, and receiving that sweet, sweet deep space data — NASA tracks the legendary Voyager 1 spacecraft using the DSN.
What better moment than this to turn up “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)”? Like there’s a bad moment…
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