As the Artemis II mission crew heads back toward Earth following a history-making trip around the moon this week, NASA dropped the astronauts‘ highly anticipated morning playlist.
“You asked for it. Here it is,” NASA wrote Wednesday on social media, sharing the list via Spotify. “Each track was selected by the Moon crew, continuing a tradition that started more than 50 years ago. Stay tuned to find out which songs they’ll choose next.”
The current eight-song list includes:
- “Sleepyhead” by Young & Sick
- “Green Light (feat. André 3000)” by John Legend and André 3000
- “In a Daydream” by Freddy Jones Band
- “Pink Pony Club” by Chappell Roan
- “Working Class Heroes (Work)” by CeeLo Green
- “Good Morning” by Mandisa and TobyMac
- “Tokyo Drifting” by Glass Animals and Denzel Curry
- “Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie
Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen were launched into space on April 1 for their 10-day moon mission. Earlier this week, they completed a lunar flyby, becoming the first astronauts to loop around the moon in more than half a century. The crew captured stunning photos of Earth, the far side of the moon and an eclipse in space.
NASA 
The astronauts are the first humans to have seen with their own eyes large swaths of the far side of the moon in daylight, and they traveled farther from Earth than any humans in history, reaching a maximum distance from Earth of 252,756 miles.
The crew has woken up to music each day — “Under Pressure” played Wednesday — which is a tradition held over from previous Apollo missions.
Why does NASA use music for wake-up calls?
In 2015, Colin Fries of the NASA History Division compiled a chronology of wake-up calls.
“There have always been inquiries about flown items and mission events as we all know, and those about wakeup calls and music played in space encompassed a steady stream (no pun intended)!” he wrote.
In his chronology, Fries referenced a letter from Lynn W. Heninger, then NASA’s acting assistant administrator for congressional relations, to a lawmaker in 1990 in which Heninger wrote: “Use of music to awaken astronauts on space missions dates back at least to the Apollo Program, when astronauts returning from the Moon were serenaded by their colleagues in mission control with lyrics from popular songs that seemed appropriate to the occasion.”
“The common element of all these selections is that they promote a sense of camaraderie and esprit de corps among the astronauts and ground support personnel. That, in fact, is the sole reason for having wake-up music; and it is the reason that NASA management has neither attempted to dictate its content nor allowed outside interests to influence the process,” Heninger wrote to Illinois Rep. Robert H. Michel.
What are past crews’ wake-up songs?
The Apollo 10 mission crew’s wake-up songs in 1969 included “The Best Is Yet To Come” by Tony Bennett and “It’s Nice to Go Trav’ling” by Frank Sinatra, and “Come Fly With Me” when Apollo 10 woke up Mission Control.
The Apollo 15 mission in 1971 had a sense of humor, selecting the theme song from “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
What song will the Artemis II crew wake up to on their final day in space?
NASA hasn’t said just yet, but in the past, several crews have woken up on their final day in space to Dean Martin’s popular song “Going Back to Houston.”
The Artemis II crew’s final day in space is Friday, when the Orion capsule is expected to splash down off the California coast near San Diego.
