2025 marks a number of anniversaries that will be celebrated in a space mission:
- Estrack, the global ground station network of the European Space Agency (ESA), will be 50 years old this year.
- With its large deep space antenna, the station in Cerbreros (Spain) has been ensuring a good connection to ESA missions in space for 20 years.
- This year marks the 200th anniversary of Johann Strauss II
- And the Vienna Symphony Orchestra is 125 years old this year.
The ‘Waltz into Space’ mission is celebrating these four birthdays on 31 May 2025. The Vienna Symphony Orchestra will give a concert and perform the Strauss Blue Danube Waltz (‘An der schönen blauen Donau’). ESA will broadcast this performance live into space via the Cerbreros antenna.
The waltz is finally making its way to space: Ever since Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey, the iconic Danube Waltz has been considered by many as the unofficial anthem of outer space. Nevertheless, the waltz did not make it onto the Voyager Golden Records a few years after the film was released. In 1977, two data carriers with messages from Earth to extraterrestrials were sent into space. They contained images, sounds of nature, greetings in various languages and 27 of the world's greatest pieces of music. The Danube Waltz was not among them.
How this could happen is shown in a humorous video by the Vienna Tourist Board.
This ‘error’ will be corrected on 31 May 2025 at 21:30 CEST. When the Danube Waltz is played on the ‘Bridge between Earth and Space’, this can be experienced live. Information about the 15-minute live stream can be found on the Waltz into Space page of the Vienna Tourist Board.
