American rapper Missy Elliott has won many awards, including seven Grammy Awards, but now she has received an even more special award thanks to NASA.
NASA revealed that Elliott has become the first hip-hop artist to send a song to Venus.
NASA announced that the lyrics to Elliott's hit song The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly) have been sent 158 million miles through space to Earth's "evil twin" by the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
"My song 'The Rain' has officially been moved to Venus, the planet of power, beauty and empowerment. The sky is not the limit, it's just the beginning," she tweeted.
NASA turned to its largest and most sensitive communications service, the Deep Space Network (DSN), to send the song into space.
The DSN features an array of giant radio antennas that allow missions to track spacecraft, send commands and receive data from them.
So far, the system has only transmitted one other song into space, making this the first transmission of its kind for hip-hop music.
“Both space exploration and Missy Elliott’s art have been about pushing boundaries,” said Brittany Brown, director of the Digital Technology Division in the Office of Communications at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Missy has a proven track record of infusing space-themed stories and futuristic visuals into her music videos, so the opportunity to collaborate on something out of this world is a real fit.”
The song was broadcast at 10:05 a.m. Pacific Time on Friday, July 12, from DSN's 34-meter (112-foot) wide dish called Deep Space Station 13 (DSS-13), from California to Venus at the speed of sound, taking just 14 minutes to reach the planet, which is 158 million miles (254 million kilometers) away.
In addition to providing some entertainment for any aliens lurking around Venus, the transmission provided an important test for the DSN.
Two NASA missions were designed to explore Venus and send data back to Earth using DSN – DAVINCI and VERITAS.
DAVINCI (Deep Venus Atmosphere Probe for Noble Gases, Chemistry and Imaging) is scheduled to launch in 2029, while VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography and Spectroscopy) will launch in 2031.