A European Space Agency antenna near Avila, Spain, will transmit composer Johann Strauss II’s “Blue Danube” waltz into space. Antenna photo courtesy of ESA.
In Monday’s (5/22) National Public Radio, Rebecca Hersher reports, “Johann Strauss II’s popular orchestral piece ‘By the Beautiful Blue Danube’ has been inextricably linked to space since it was used in the 1968 classic film 2001: A Space Odyssey…. This week, the piece will take a more literal place among the stars when the European Space Agency broadcasts it into space. On Saturday, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra will perform the piece live, while a radio antenna in Spain beams the music out. The ‘Blue Danube’ broadcast is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the ESA’s creation, as well as 200 years since Strauss’ birth… Strauss was from Austria, and the Vienna Tourist Board is helping the space agency arrange the broadcast…. The radio antenna in Spain … is operated by the ESA. It supports uncrewed European missions to study the surface of Mars, create a map of the stars and take up-close pictures of the sun…. The Vienna Symphony Orchestra’s performance will be livestreamed online. The audio of the performance will be converted into an electromagnetic wave. That wave, which is not audible to humans, will be transmitted into space at the speed of light, in the direction of [distant probe] Voyager 1.”
