Cosmic Log: Alarm as an astronaut

By Alan Boyle

Ever since it was Apollo, NASA has been beaming up melodies to begin the working day for the astronauts to travel. For the last mission of the space shuttle Discovery, the space agency has asked the public to choose a couple of fitting wakeup songs from Top 40 list. More than 2.4 million votes have been registered in the online contest and the winners are "blue sky" by Big Head Todd and the Monsters (with 722,662 votes) and the initials of "star trek" by Alexander Courage (671,134 votes). Songsters have also presented more than 1,300 original compositions for consideration as future wakeup songs.

Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, you too can wake up as an astronaut. Just have the mission control team, click on the button "play" and crank up the volume.

There will be another vote online for the melodies to be played during the wakeup Swan STS-127 Endeavour in April. Stay tuned ...