NASA Sends Missy Elliott’s Song to Venus

NASA has made history by sending Missy Elliott’s famous song “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” 158 million miles from Earth to Venus. The song took nearly 14 minutes to reach Venus and was announced by the space agency on Monday.

This event makes “The Rain” the second song ever sent into deep space, after the Beatles’ “Across the Universe” in 2008. Missy Elliott shared her excitement on social media, saying, “My song ‘The Rain’ has officially been transmitted to Venus, the planet that symbolizes strength, beauty, and empowerment. The sky is not the limit, it’s just the beginning.”

Venus is a very hot planet, with temperatures reaching 860 degrees Fahrenheit. It has rain made of sulfuric acid, which evaporates in the heat and forms toxic clouds.

In 2021, Rolling Stone listed “The Rain” as one of the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time.” The song, released in 1997, debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 chart with 129,000 copies sold in the first week.

Missy Elliott is currently on her “Out of This World” tour, and Venus is her favourite planet. Brittany Brown from NASA said, “Missy has always used space and futuristic ideas in her music videos, so this project is perfect for her.”

The song was sent from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California at 10:05 a.m. PDT on Friday, using the Deep Space Network, which has large radio antennas that send signals at the speed of light.

Besides the Beatles and Missy Elliott, other music has been sent into space. In 1977, NASA sent “The Sounds of Earth,” a gold-plated record with music from Bach, Chuck Berry, Mozart, Beethoven, and more, on the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials.

NASA’s latest project continues to combine art and science, exploring new ways to push the limits of both space travel and music.