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NASA To Beam Beatles Song Across The Universe - Literally

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By NEIL JOHNSON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 31, 2008

TAMPA - Perhaps to see if the Beatles have truly universal appeal, NASA plans to beam one of the group's songs into space toward the North Star.

The National Aeronautical and Space Administration will send "Across the Universe" speeding into space at 7 p.m. Monday.

The song will head into the cosmos through NASA's Deep Space Network. It is the first time the agency has sent a song toward distant stars.

NASA will aim the song at Polaris, or the North Star, to commemorate a basket of anniversaries, including the 40th anniversary of the day the Beatles recorded the song.

It also marks the 50th anniversary of NASA's founding and the launch of Explorer 1, the first United States satellite to reach orbit.

And then there's the founding 45 years ago of the Deep Space Network, which is three communications facilities in California, Australia and Spain that provide radio and radar astronomy observations of the solar system and beyond.

So far NASA's broadcast of Beatles songs into space has been of a more limited range than a distant star.

A number of the group's songs have been transmitted to the International Space Station or to astronaut crews in orbit.

Actually when the song reaches Polaris may be the true test of the longevity of the group's popularity.

Even traveling at 186,000 miles per second, it will be 431 years before anyone, or anything, near Polaris hears it.

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