will.i.am, NASA team up for first song from Mars

will.i.am and NASA will debut 'Reach for the Stars' Tuesday. The new will.i.am single will be beamed from the NASA Curiosity rover.

|
Bill Ingalls/NASA/AP
Will.i.am (c.) listens to NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Sciences and Exploration Directorate Chief Scientist Jim Garvin (l.) talk next to a mock up of the Mars rover Curiosity in Pasadena, Calif. On Tuesday, NASA will debut a new song by will.i.am.

Bruno Mars move over. will.i.am has got a new single coming direct from Mars, the first-ever song to debut on another planet.

The Mars Curiosity mission has something for everyone: Cool pix, lasers blasting rocks, and now the music of the spheres.

"Reaching for the Stars" will be broadcast from the red planet at 4 p.m. EDT Tuesday.

The broadcast will be part of a NASA educational event for students at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif.

 
According to NASA, members of the team that successfully landed the rover on Mars earlier this month will explain to students the mission and the technology behind the song's interplanetary transmission. will.i.am will then premiere "Reach for the Stars," a new composition about the singer's passion for science, technology, and space exploration.
 
will.i.am's i.am.angel Foundation, in partnership with Discovery Education of Silver Spring, Md., a provider of digital resources to kindergarten through grade 12 classrooms, will announce a new science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics initiative featuring NASA assets such as the Mars Curiosity Rover.
 
The event will be streamed on the agency's website and broadcast on NASA TV.

will.i.am is a big NASA fan and has appeared in a NASA promotional video explaining how NASA technologies have helped increase production of clean water, provide remote medical care and solar electricity for refrigeration, and keep food fresh during its trip from field to market.

While will.i.am has the first song, the honor of the first human voice to be broadcast from another planet was reserved for NASA administrator Charlie Bolden.

Here's Mr. Bolden's message:

Hello. This is Charlie Bolden, NASA Administrator, speaking to you via the broadcast capabilities of the Curiosity Rover, which is now on the surface of Mars.

Since the beginning of time, humankind’s curiosity has led us to constantly seek new life…new possibilities just beyond the horizon. I want to congratulate the men and women of our NASA family as well as our commercial and government partners around the world, for taking us a step beyond, to Mars.

This is an extraordinary achievement. Landing a rover on Mars is not easy – others have tried – only America has fully succeeded. The investment we are making…the knowledge we hope to gain from our observation and analysis of Gale Crater, will tell us much about the possibility of life on Mars as well as the past and future possibilities for our own planet. Curiosity will bring benefits to Earth and inspire a new generation of scientists and explorers, as it prepares the way for a human mission in the not-too-distant future.

Thank you.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to will.i.am, NASA team up for first song from Mars
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0828/will.i.am-NASA-team-up-for-first-song-from-Mars
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe