Good day sunshine for McCartney
It was “Good Day Sunshine” for the international space station crew today.
NASA astronaut Bill McArthur and Russian cosmonaut Valery Tokarev were treated to a live wake-up call of the Beatles classic in a first ever concert linkup to the space sation.
On Earth, former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney performed the hit and another song, English Tea, yesterday before a cheering crowd in Anaheim as part of his 11-week “US” tour.
The performance was beamed to the space station crew 220 miles above the Earth and broadcast on NASA television, which showed live feeds from space.
McArthur and Tokarev bobbed up and down and sipped from squeeze pouches through the show, getting a rousing cheer from the audience.
“I can’t believe that we’re actually transmitting to space!” McCartney said. “This is sensational. I love it.”
McArthur, who did a couple of zer-gravity flips, noted McCartney’s creative achievements and thanked him for playing the songs.
“That was simply magnificent,” McArthur said. “We consider you an explorer just as we are.”
It is a tradition to wake astronauts up with recorded songs, but this marked te first time astronauts listened to live music from space.
The rock icon came up with the idea after learning that NASA’s Mission Control used Good Day Sunshine to wake up the Space Shuttle Discovery astronauts in August with word that conditions were favourable to return to Earth.
The wake-up call marked the space station crew’s 44th day of a planned six month mission in space.
