30 Seconds To Mars Debuts Song From International Space Station

By Nick Venable | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

Despite their name, the band 30 Seconds to Mars doesn’t really have a whole lot to do with space, beyond an occasionally ethereal synth-driven sound and some lyrical references. For better or worse, their sound has definitely travelled from trippy guitar rock to something larger and more encompassing. Anti-aggro arena rock for the lover’s soul.

30 Seconds to Mars’ new album LOVE LUST FAITH + DREAMS, their first since the popular lawsuit-tainted 2009 album This is War, will be out on May 21, and their first single has already taken the band farther than they’ve ever been: to outer space. It would have taken a tad longer than 30 more seconds to get to the red planet, but any cosmos road trip is better if you’ve got tunes. Put on your astronaut helmet and give the song a listen below.

A CD containing the single “Up in the Air” got a taxi ride into space via a Falcon 9 rocket, as the disc was part of a SpaceX cargo shipment being sent to the International Space Station, where the “whoa-oh”-laden song debuted Monday evening. The band, fronted by actor Jared Leto, were on site at Cape Canaveral March 1 to watch the rocket take off.

“It was a phenomenal morning; it’s been a mind-blowing experience, sending our music up into space, where it’s pushing into orbit and going around the earth, that’s a pretty amazing thing to think about,” Leto told MTV. “It seemed impossible; for a moment I played with the idea of a weather balloon, but I had been speaking with NASA for quite some time about ways to find something creative to do together. And I presented them with this idea and here we are.”

“A core part of what Thirty Seconds To Mars is about is dreams … creativity and dreams are one in the same,” he continued. “And so it’s inspiring and challenging to try to make the impossible into reality. And this has certainly been an example of that; putting your music into space is no easy feat.”

Indeed. Now we’re just waiting for the duet with the new media friendly ISS commander and Chris Hadfield.

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