EXCLUSIVE: Spirit wake up music. or: NASA gets into the Groove!

ATSNN.com Exclusive
It has become somewhat of a NASA tradition that during missions to space a wake-up song is played at the beginning of each day's mission. Such wake-up Music was played to shuttle crews at the commencement of their daily activities. Wake-up music was also played for the teams controlling the Pathfinder mission to Mars in 1997 at the beginning of each Sol's activities. Wake-up music has made a triumphant return for the current Rover missions on Mars.

The function of the Wake-Up Music is as it would suggest, to 'wake-up' the mission team and get them focused on the days activities. As we will see the selection is often a little bit tongue-in-cheek. The music was originally played for the team around the time that the "sweep" was transmitted to the Rover shortly after it woke up. This sweeps the transmit frequency so the Rover's receiver can lock onto it. This occurs at around 8.45AM local time (at the landing site). However this meant the song was being played before many of the team members came-in, so the time was subsequently shifted to 10AM local time. By this time most of the crew are on station and ready to begin the Sol's activities. Sol is the term for a Martian 'Day'. One Martian Sol is 39.5 minutes longer than one Earth Day.

The song (sometimes songs) for each Sol are typically chosen by the Mission Managers, in the case of Spirit this is Dr. Mark Adler. The songs are chosen for a link they have with the planned activities for the day. The selections are often quite humorous. Dr. Adler was kind enough to give ATSNN the full list of songs played on the Spirit Mission so far.

• Sol 2: Good Morning, Good Morning, by the Beatles.
  
• Sol 3: Oh What a Beautiful Mornin�, by Rodgers and Hammerstein.
  
• Sol 4: Hail to the Chief, by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. (Presidential phone call.)
  
• Sol 5: Satisfaction, by the Rolling Stones. ("I can't get no ...", Air bags not cooperating.)
  
• Sol 6: Get Up, Stand Up, by Bob Marley. (Lift mechanism actuated.)
  
• Sol 7: Da Da Da, by Casaca. (Brazilian song suggested by investigator from Brazil, RRGTM student that week from Brazil.)
  
• Sol 8: Soak Up the Sun, by Cheryl Crow. (Laid-back sol.)
  
• Sol 9: I Can See Clearly Now, by Jimmy Cliff. (Picture taking sol.)
  
• Sol 10: Unchained, by Van Halen; Hit the Road Jack, by Buster Poindexter; Turn, Turn, Turn, by the Byrds. (Cable-cutting, backup on deck. start turn on deck.)
  
• Sol 11: I Get Around, by the Beach Boys; Round and Round, by Ratt; You Spin Me �Round, by Thal�a. (Rest of turn on deck.)
  
• Sol 12: Born to be Wild, by Steppenwolf; Rawhide, by Riders in the Sky; Who Let The Dogs Out?, by the Baha Men. (Egress.)
  
• Sol 13: Reach Out, by the Four Tops. (First arm activity.)
  
• Sol 14: You�ve Got The Magic Touch, by The Platters. (Touching arm down on Mars.)
  
• Sol 15: If You Love Somebody Set Them Free, by Sting; Roam, by The B-52�s; Good Times Roll, by The Cars. (Last engineering activities, first drive on the surface.)
  
• Sol 16: After Midnight, by Eric Clapton; Trash Day, by Weird Al Yankovic. (Crew starts Mars day after California midnight, part of the sol dedicated to deleting contents of flash.)
  
• Sol 17: We Will Rock You, by Queen. (First arm activities and observations on a rock.)
  
• Sol 18: Sledgehammer, by Peter Gabriel. (Intended first RAT sol, though ran into problems later, to put it mildly.)
  
• Sol 19: S. O. S., by Abba. (Objective was to regain contact with Spirit after a loss of communications. We did.)
  
• Sol 20: Baby, Talk To Me, from the musical Bye Bye Birdie. (Objective was to get Spirit to send data. We did.)
  
• Sol 21: Satellite, by The Hooters. (A rousing lullaby for when we were trying, and succeeded, to get the rover to go to sleep. We did.)
  
• Sol 22: We Can Work It Out, by The Beatles. (Beginning debugging activities to get Spirit back to normal.)
  
• Sol 23: Start Me Up, by the Rolling Stones. (Booting in crippled mode.)
  
• Sol 24: Flash, by Queen. (Clearly a flash problem, continuing to debug.)
  
• Sol 25: (You're The) Devil In Disguise, by Elvis Presley, and With a Little Help From My Friends, by The Beatles. (Continuing debug, got picture!)
  
• Sol 26: I Want A New Drug, by Huey Lewis & The News. (Trying yet another recipe for getting task trace, still didn't work.)
  
• Sol 27: Anticipation, by Carly Simon. (Seeing if the file deletes will do the trick or not. They did.)
  
• Sol 28: On the Road Again, by Willie Nelson. ("Can't wait to get back on ...", back to normal use of the flash file system, itching to get going.)
  
• Sol 29: Here Comes The Sun, by The Beatles. (More normal operations, Mars Express coordinated overflight.)
  
• Sol 30: Lean On Me, performed by Club Nouveau. (Intended RAT brush sol, pressing RAT on rock, though activities did not complete.)
  
• Sol 31: I Wanna Be Sedated, by the Ramones. (Very low activity sol to get the rover rested and ready for surgery on the following sol.)
  
• Sol 32: Wipe Out, by The Surfaris, and We're Not Gonna Take It, by Twisted Sister. (File system reformat.)
  
• Sol 33: Back In The Saddle Again, by Gene Autry, and The Star Spangled Banner, performed by Beyonc�. (Back to normal operations, color flag picture on RAT.)
  
• Sol 34: The Laundry Cycle: Pounded on a Rock, by The Bobs, and Bump N' Grind, by R. Kelly. (First RAT grinding.)
  
• Sol 35: Up Around The Bend, by Credence Clearwater Revival. (Intended drive around lander to begin drive to crater. Didn't get anywhere though.)
  
• Sol 36: Stuck On You, by Elvis Presley. (Drive didn't work yestersol -- we've been stuck here for weeks. Drive did work later that sol.)
  
• Sol 37: Proud Mary, performed by Tina Turner. ("And we're rolling, rolling, rolling on the river ...", first long drive, ended up being more than 20 meters.)
  
• Sol 38: Runnin' With The Devil, by Van Halen. (HGA problem that sol, no activities, song played late in the sol.)
  
• Sol 39: Hit the Road Jack, by Buster Poindexter. (Another long drive -- yes, this is a reuse of that song.)
  
• Sol 40: What A Wonderful World, by Louis Armstrong. (Mars, that is.)
  
• Sol 41: Open Road Song, Eve 6. (Driving song, though only did several inches of driving to position in front of rock.)
  
• Sol 42: Lift Up Every Stone, John Hiatt. (Observations of the rock "Mimi".)
  
• Sol 43: Livin' On A Prayer, Bon Jovi. (Many sols tend to start with our fingers crossed.)
  
• Sol 44: Way Over Yonder, by Carole King. (Heading for that crater.)
  
• Sol 45: Touch Me in the Morning, by Diana Ross. (Touch and go sol.)
  
• Sol 46: Wake Up Little Susie, by The Everly Brothers. (Generic wake-up song.)
  
• Sol 47: Dig Down Deep, by Hot Soup. (Trenching sol.)

Clearly, the teams are keeping their sense of humor with them even under the great workload and stress the mission imposes upon them. It even seems the selections get slightly more manic around the stressful periods of the mission. Sol 24 for example (I might be alone here but I get a chuckle every time I think of the teams sitting around pondering a problem with the Flash memory aboard Spirit, then the opening bars of the Flash Gordon theme come booming out).

Flash - ah - Saviour of the universe
Flash - ah - He'll save ev'ry one of us

We also believe the teams are keeping a copy of David Bowie's Life on Mars handy, just in case...

Have you any other clever or amusing suggestions, or can you predict what songs the teams might choose during the remainder of the mission?




[Edited on 11-3-2004 by SkepticOverlord]

NASA still have THE best sense of humour!

Europe - The Final Countdown
Bowie - Ground control to Major Tom
The Carpenters - Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Bad moon rising
Elton John: Rocketman

-wonders if they have Asteroid by Killing Joke somewhere, just in case...-

My preditions are Doobie Brothers - Long train Runnin' for a driving Sol. Also something by ACDC, Let there be Rock or For those about to Rock for a Rock-Grinding Sol.

I'll be flapping my ears when they will play:
"working in a coal mine" by Lee Dorsey

Hey, Space.com stole 'our' list :

www.space.com...

They didnt even put a link ot ATSNN under it

[Edited on 26-2-2004 by Zion Mainframe]

Baha zing, they shoulda gone for the Bowie gag.

Big big world - Emilia
Cruel crazy beautiful world - Johnny Clegg & Savuka
Distant sun - Crowded house
Don't let the sun go down on me - Elton John, George Michael
Have you ever seen the rain - Creedence clearwater revival
Cosmos theme - Vangelis (for Carl)
I still haven't found what I'm looking for - U2
Infrared dawn - Adam
Twist and shout - The beatles

Never the machine forever. - Soundgarden

Originally posted by Zion Mainframe
Hey, Space.com stole 'our' list

:

www.space.com...

They didnt even put a link ot ATSNN under it

[Edited on 26-2-2004 by Zion Mainframe]

Write them. That's crappy netiquette.