NASA's Pluto Flyby Gets Funky in This Awesome Music Video

News
By
published

NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto just got funky (with awesome results) in this music video, which blends a healthy dose of science with the tune "Uptown Funk" by Mark Ronson, featuring Bruno Mars.

Tim Blais, the Canadian scientist and musician known as acapellascience on YouTube, was clearly getting excited about the science behind New Horizons' journey when he released this music video, "Pluto Mars - Outbound Probe" in the days leading up to the historic Pluto flyby on July 14. 

Blais' song, which you can see on the acapellascience YouTube page, is packed with details about the New Horizons mission, listing the instruments aboard the probe and its measurement capabilities all while keeping up a groovy beat: 

"Next stop
That ice cold
No cell of life on that light globe
This one's for them dark worlds
Them dwarf worlds
Low mass-ter pieces
Chillin', millin', round in Kuiper Belt City"

Blais' tune is one of two recent music videos that put a musical spotlight on the New Horizons mission. Last month, we saw the release of "Oh Pluto" by singer-songwriter Craig Werth, which features footage of people from all over greeting the dwarf planet ahead of the spacecraft's flyby. 

Blais is accustomed to covering space in his music by now — his recent piece on cosmic background radiation, to the tune of Circle of Life, lays down the science behind the search for evidence of cosmic inflation and gravitational waves in space's emissions. (He also covered black holes and string theory.)

The images of Pluto found in the music video are from July 11, a few days before the flyby, but NASA has been releasing steadily better images over the course of the past week. They will continue to release detailed photos every Friday as the New Horizons probe sends down more and more data from its close-up analysis. Don't believe it? Just watch!

Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.

Sarah Lewin
Sarah Lewin
Associate Editor

Sarah Lewin started writing for Space.com in June of 2015 as a Staff Writer and became Associate Editor in 2019 . Her work has been featured by Scientific American, IEEE Spectrum, Quanta Magazine, Wired, The Scientist, Science Friday and WGBH's Inside NOVA. Sarah has an MA from NYU's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program and an AB in mathematics from Brown University. When not writing, reading or thinking about space, Sarah enjoys musical theatre and mathematical papercraft. She is currently Assistant News Editor at Scientific American. You can follow her on Twitter @SarahExplains.