NASA sends Missy Elliott song to Venus

Missy Elliott’s song lyrics were sent into space when NASA beamed her song “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” 158 million miles (254 million kilometers) from Earth to Venus, the space agency said Monday.

It took almost 14 minutes for the hip-hop track to reach its destination. The song by Missy Elliott is the second song ever transmitted into space, after Beatles’ “Across the Universe” in 2008.

“My song ‘The Rain’ has officially been broadcast to Venus, the planet that symbolizes strength, beauty and empowerment,” Missy Elliott said in a social media post. “The sky is not the limit, it is just the beginning.”

It does indeed rain on Venus, but according to NASA, the drops that fall from clouds of sulfuric acid evaporate “back into a never-ending toxic cloud” due to temperatures of up to 400 degrees Celsius.

Rolling Stone named “The Rain” one of the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” in 2021. The 1997 song debuted at number 3 on the Billboard 200, selling 129,000 copies in its first week of release.

The singer is in the middle of her “Out of This World” tour. According to NASA, Venus is her favorite planet.

“Both space exploration and Missy Elliott’s art are about pushing boundaries,” said Brittany Brown, director of digital and technology for NASA’s Office of Communications. “Missy has experience incorporating space-centric storytelling and futuristic imagery in her music videos, so the opportunity to collaborate on something out of the ordinary is truly fitting.”

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California sent a transmission into space at 10:05 a.m. PDT on Friday, NASA said. They used the space agency’s Deep Space Network, which has a series of giant radio antennas, to beam the song toward Venus. The song was transmitted at the speed of light.

While the Beatles and Missy Elliott’s songs are the only ones sent into space, music has been sent into space before. “The Sounds of Earth,” also known as the “Golden Record,” was sent into space on the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft in 1977 as part of a message “designed to tell extraterrestrials a story of our world,” according to NASA. The record was a 12-inch copper record with a gold-plated finish and featured music by Bach, Chuck Berry, Mozart, Beethoven and others.