Canadian astronaut records first original song from orbit

A Canadian astronaut has teamed up with Barenaked Ladies lead singer Ed Robertson for the first ever original track to be written and recorded in space, 402 km above the Earth aboard the International Space Station.

The pair wrote the song together before the collaboration was recorded via satellite at a studio in Toronto. The song, called “ISS (Is Somebody Singing)” focuses on the experience of a person in space missing his loved ones on the Earth below.

Astronaut Chris Hadfield and Robertson began co-writing the song when Hadfield was still in training in Russia for his five-month mission on the ISS, Space.com reported.

The duo first met more than a decade ago when Hadfield gave the award-winning Barenaked Ladies band a tour of Mission Control in Houston. The song, mixed earlier this week, included other members of the Barenaked Ladies as well as the Wexford Gleeks, a youth choir from the Wexford Collegiate School for the Arts.

Hadfield performed from the cupola, which is an observation deck on the ISS. “Welcome to the cupola. I’m ready to play a little music,” Hadfield said, clutching a guitar, in a video of the song recording.  “Indeed. Your scenery looks a little nicer than ours,” Robertson responded from the studio”.

Hadfield then proudly showed off his guitar pick, to which Robertson quipped: “I know, yours matches your mission patch.”

As the collaborators sang, Hadfield periodically looked up through the cupola windows to gaze at Earth. Hadfield is reportedly working on making enough songs for an album - in between his other duties on the station.