Temperatures on Venus hover around 870 degrees, but the second-closest planet to the sun got a little cooler recently when NASA showered it with Missy Elliott’s hit song “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly).”
The feat occurred at 10:05 a.m. on July 12, when NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge broadcast the song via a 112-foot-wide radio dish near Barstow, California.
The signal traveled through the solar system at the speed of light, covering a distance of about 158 million kilometers in just 14 minutes.
The transmitter, also named Venus, is part of the Deep Space Network, or DSN. The network is a collection of radio antennas used to track, send commands to, and receive scientific data from spacecraft heading to the moon and elsewhere in the solar system.
NASA propelled Elliott, who released the song on July 15, 1997, into the record books. It was the first hip-hop song, and only the second song, that NASA radioed into space. The Beatles’ “Across the Universe” was the first.
The “Evening Star”—also known as the “Morning Star” when visible at sunrise—is the artist’s favorite planet.
“I still can’t believe I’m leaving this world with NASA via the Deep Space Network as ‘The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)’ becomes the first hip-hop song to be transmitted into space!” Elliott said in a NASA statement ahead of the event. “I chose Venus because it symbolizes strength, beauty and empowerment and I’m so honored to have the opportunity to share my art and message with the universe!”
NASA’s collaboration with the futuristic artist comes as the agency prepares for two upcoming uncrewed missions to Venus aimed at collecting data on the mysterious planet, where an atmosphere composed mostly of carbon dioxide and clouds of sulfuric acid create unlivable conditions for Earthlings.
The partnership is fitting because “space exploration and Missy Elliott’s art are both about pushing boundaries,” said NASA spokeswoman Brittany Brown, who initially contacted Elliott’s team.
The interplanetary song’s release came on the second night of Elliott’s space-themed “Out of This World” tour in Los Angeles, the first headlining tour of her three-decade career. And it came just days after the Cancer star treated fans to a free party in downtown Los Angeles to celebrate her birthday — complete with an aerial show in which choreographed drones took the shape of her face as well as a flying saucer.
Opening Elliott’s concert were his longtime production partner Timbaland, rapper Busta Rhymes and singer Ciara.
The “Get Ur Freak On” singer wowed fans again with dancers in glow-in-the-dark costumes, spaceship projections and an animation of Elliott dressed as an astronaut and smiling as she glides through the cosmos. Fans received bracelets with remote-controlled lights that twinkled like stars to the beat of the music.
At the end of the show, Elliott was lifted up by a hydraulic elevator with jets of smoke flowing around her, as if she were ascending into the heavens in the mothership.
