Did You Know This Famous Rock Band Was Allegedly the First To Ever Be Played in Outer Space?

Imagine being the first rock band to ever be played by astronauts in outer space. I certainly would never shut up about it. That was the case of psychedelic rock outfit Pink Floyd, whose music was played in space during the 1988 Soyuz TM-7 spacecraft launch. According to David Gilmour via the 1994 release, Pink Floyd: The Visual Documentary, Pink Floyd was the first rock band to be played in space.

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Pink Floyd was known for making very spacey music well before that 1988 expedition. From albums like The Dark Side Of The Moon from 1973 to The Wall from 1979, a lot of the band’s records had an almost extraterrestrial quality to them. However, those albums were not the specific records that were brought on the space mission. Instead, the 1988 live album Delicate Sound Of Thunder, featuring David Gilmour, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright, was what was brought on board. For reference, that live album features renditions of famous Pink Floyd songs. Some include “Time”, Shine On You Crazy Diamond”, “Wish You Were Here”, and more.

Years later, other songs from Pink Floyd would be chosen to be taken to space. The most famous one would be “Eclipse” from The Dark Side Of The Moon. That track would be toted along on an expedition by NASA in 2004.

The Story Behind Pink Floyd’s Space Debut

So, how exactly did Pink Floyd make it to space?

Less than a week after Delicate Sound Of Thunder dropped, Mason and Gilmour showed up at the launch of the Soviet Soyuz TM-7 spacecraft. The launch took place at the Baikonur Cosmodrome located in Kazakhstan. Astronauts Alexander Vokov and Sergei Krikalyov manned the mission. The pair decided to take a cassette tape copy of Pink Floyd’s live album with them.

The pair of astronauts played the album as they completed their mission, which involved docking with the Mir space station. They would leave the cassette tape at the station itself, where it would sit until Mir was deorbited in 2001.

“To say that we are thrilled at the thought of being the first rock band to be played in space is something of an understatement,” Gilmour said of the event. I definitely believe that.

Fun fact: Delicate Sound Of Thunder is considered one of the first records to be released (officially) in the Soviet Union, along with Paul McCartney’s 1988 record Choba B CCCP.

Photo by ANDRE DURAND/AFP via Getty Images