Science NASA sends The Beatles “on and on across the universe” | NASA sends The Beatles “on and on across the universe” |
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| by William Atkins | |
| Saturday, 02 February 2008 | |
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The event has a multiple purpose: the 40th anniversary of the day that The Beatles recorded the song and the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the group; along with the 50th anniversary that NASA launched Explorer 1, the 50th anniversary of the founding of NASA, and the 45th anniversary of the Deep Space Network. The Beatles song “Across the Universe” appeared on the album No One’s Gonna Change Our World, which was released on December 12, 1969. The lyrics for the song appear at the Lyrics007 website “The Beatles—Across The Universe Lyrics," along with other websites that features lyrics. The Beatles began playing together in 1960 and soon thereafter began their “British Invasion” to America. The members of the rock-and-roll group—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr—began their musical careers in and around the city of Liverpool, England. The Beatles is considered one of the (if not “the”) most popular, commercially successful, and critically acclaimed bands in the history of popular modern music. The official website for The Beatles is: http://www.beatles.com/. NASA’s Explorer 1 was officially called Satellite 1958 Alpha. It was the first successfully launched Earth satellite for the United States. Explorer 1 was launched at 10:46 p.m. EST on January 31, 1958, from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (Florida) onboard a Juno 1 rocket. The NASA/JPL website for Explorer 1 is: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/explorer/.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was founded in on July 29, 1958, as an agency of the U.S. government. It was deemed responsible for the country’s fledgling space program, which was in deep competition with the Soviet Union to send a human to the surface of the Moon. The space agency was created by the National Aeronautics and Space Act. Today, its goals are to work within civilian and military aerospace research, manned and unmanned space exploration, scientific discoveries, and aeronautics research. According to its website, its motto is “For the benefit of all.” The NASA website is: http://www.nasa.gov/. The Deep Space Network (DSN) is part of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (California). It is an international network of communication facilities whose mission is to support interplanetary spacecraft missions and radio and radar astronomy ground based and space-based observatories in their exploration of the solar system and the universe, in general. The DSN was formed in January 1958. The website of the Deep Space Network is: http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn/. The transmission of The Beatles’ song will be aimed at Polaris (“The North Star,” or Alpha Ursae Minoris). The star is approximately 431 light-years away from Earth, where one light-year is the distance that light travels in a vacuum over a one Earth-year period of time. Light travels at approximately 186,000 miles per second. It is called The North Star because the star is currently very close to the north celestial pole of the Earth. Polaris is the brightest star in the constellation Ursa Minor.
According to the NASA article “NASA to Beam Beatles' 'Across the Universe' Into Space”, when Paul McCartney heard about the event, he exclaimed “Amazing! Well done, NASA!” Later, he wrote a message to NASA. It included: “Send my love to the aliens. All the best. Paul.”
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