Who says there is no sound in space?

Over the past century of the space age, music has drifted through the cosmos. It has traveled on physical phonograph records aboard deep-space probes and pulsed outward from massive ground-based radio arrays beaming melodies into the unknown. Music has become one of our most recognizable expressions of space exploration. The physical void may carry no acoustic sound, but that silence invites artists and composers to imagine what the cosmos feels like.

Want to see how music and aerospace intersect in the cosmos? Stellar Tracks is your guide to hits. Check out our music videos below, highlighting both the rich history and the evocative soundtrack of space exploration.

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Voyager B. Goode

In 1977, NASA launched the twin Voyager probes carrying the Golden Record, an interstellar time capsule designed to share Earth’s diverse culture with extraterrestrial life. Alongside classical and global folkmusic, the record included Chuck Berry’s 1958 hit "Johnny B. Goode" to represent the energy of 20th-century rock and roll. The track was selected because its story of raw talent, joy, and upward ambition captured the restless spirit of human exploration. When critics pushed back against including rock music as too adolescent, Carl Sagan famously defended the pick by noting that Earth had a lot of adolescents.

Put On Your Sunday Spacesuit

Pixar’s WALL-E opens and closes with "Put On Your Sunday Clothes" from the 1969 film adaptation of the Broadway musical Hello, Dolly!. Director Andrew Stanton chose the track because its exuberant brass and lyrics about escaping routine into an exciting new world create a striking juxtaposition against a silent, ruined Earth. By obsessively watching this musical on an old VHS tape, WALL_E learns the concept of joy and what it means to love. The Broadway anthem now sits as a classic reminder of the world we call home.

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