Commander Chris Hadfield, a social media savvy Canadian astronaut on the International Space Station, bid goodbye to his 790,000+ Twitter followers and 268,000+ Facebook friends with an acoustic cover of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.”
The commander, who gained a massive Irish following via his spectacular satellite images he’s posted in recent months, will say goodbye to the Space Station and return to Earth on Tuesday. The astronaut, dubbed Commander Cool, has even tweeted in Irish.
The spectacular video of “Space Oddity” was produced with Emm Gryner who was part of Bowie’s live band in 2000. The video shows Hadfield floating in space playing his guitar and fittingly singing an excellent cover of the 1969 classic.
When the video was tweeted, David Bowie responded, “Hallo Spaceboy.”
Gryner wrote about producing the video on her blog. She said they “incorporated into the track ambient space station noises which Chris had put on his Soundcloud.
'I was mostly blown away by how pure and earnest Chris' singing is on this track.
'And voila! An astronaut sings Space Oddity in space! I was so honored to be asked to be a part of this.”
Hadfield has been in space for five months. Before launch he had said that listening to music was very important in taking care of the “psychological side” of living in space.
However over the last five months Hadfield has most certainly been keeping himself busy by posting videos like how to throw up in space, how astronauts brush their teeth and how to make a peanut butter sandwich. He has also been posting some incredible images of Earth from above.
Now Hadfield will begin his descent to Earth and he will be replaced by Russian cosmonaut, Pavel Vinogradov.
Once Hadfield has his “sea legs” and has settled back into Earth life it’s believed that he’ll travel to Ireland to visit his daughter Kristin, who’s a PhD Psychology student at Trinity College Dublin. Hadfield thoroughly enjoyed his 2011 vacation in Ireland and told his daughter he plans to return. She told the Independent, “He had a great time in Ireland. He’ll definitely be back for my graduation, but that’s a few years away, so hopefully he’ll visit before then.”
Here’s his “Space Oddity” video:
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