NASA Releases Artemis II Astronauts' Wake-Up Playlist During Return from Lunar Flyby Mission

NASA released the Artemis II astronauts' wake-up playlist on Wednesday via Spotify, featuring eight songs chosen by the crew. The playlist includes "Sleepyhead" by Young & Sick, "Green Light (feat. Andre 3000)" by John Legend and Andre 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, and "Under Pressure" by Queen and David Bowie.

This release continues a tradition of using music for morning wake-ups that began with the Apollo program more than 50 years ago. The Artemis II mission launched on April 1 with a crew of four: commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen.

The 10-day mission involved a lunar flyby earlier in the week, during which the crew became the first to loop around the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.

They traveled farther from Earth than any previous human mission, achieving a maximum distance of 252,756 miles.

The astronauts captured photographs of Earth, the far side of the moon, and a solar eclipse during the flyby.

NASA and the White House released these images, showing a setting Earth and the eclipse from space. The crew observed large swaths of the moon's far side in daylight for the first time by humans. On Wednesday, the crew woke to "Under Pressure" as part of the daily music tradition.

NASA has not disclosed the wake-up song for the mission's final day on Friday. The Orion capsule is scheduled to splash down off the California coast near San Diego on that date.

music promotes camaraderie among astronauts and ground personnel, a practice dating to the Apollo era.

In 1990, NASA's acting assistant administrator for congressional relations, Lynn W. Heninger, explained the tradition in a letter to Illinois Representative Robert H. Michel.

“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.”

Past Apollo missions featured varied selections, such as "The Best Is Yet To Come" by Tony Bennett for Apollo 10 in 1969 and the theme from "2001: A Space Odyssey" for Apollo 15 in 1971. Several crews have used Dean Martin's "Going Back to Houston" on their final day in space.

The mission received a call from President Trump, who praised the crew for their achievement in advancing plans for moon and Mars missions initiated during his first term. The crew named a moon crater after Carroll Wiseman, the late wife of commander Reid Wiseman, who died in 2020, during an emotional exchange with mission control in Houston.