The rapper’s debut solo single, ‘The Rain’ travelled to Venus in a landmark transmission
Some people have an eerie theory to explain why we’ve never encountered alien life. According to the ‘dark forest hypothesis’ the universe could be filled with alien civilisations, but they all stay silent and undetectable, in case they’re found and destroyed by another race of hostile aliens. As far as we know, Earth is the only planet stupid enough to keep blasting signals into outer space, and last week we did it again. Hopefully, the aliens don’t see a Missy Elliott anthem as an invitation to launch a full-scale invasion.
On July 12, NASA beamed a hip hop song into outer space for the very first time. Missy Elliott’s “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” travelled around 158 million miles from Earth to Venus, traversing the distance in just under 14 minutes via the space agency’s Deep Space Network (DSN).
“YOOO this is crazy!” wrote the rapper in an Instagram post celebrating the success of the mission. “We just went #OutOfThisWorld with NASA and sent the FIRST hip hop song into space through the Deep Space Network. My song ‘The Rain’ has officially been transmitted all the way to Venus.” Why Venus? Because it’s Missy’s favourite planet, of course. “[It] symbolises strength, beauty and empowerment,” she adds. “The sky is not the limit, it’s just the beginning.”
Her debut solo single from 1997 isn’t the first song humanity has transmitted to the cosmos, for the listening pleasure of any undiscovered intelligent life forms. All the way back in 2008, NASA also used the DSN to beam the aptly-named Beatles track “Across the Universe” toward the North Star.
The DSN itself is made up of various giant radio antennas, and has been used to communicate with spacecraft and receive scientific data from the moon and beyond. Its usage predates Missy Elliott’s career by about 30 years, but “The Rain” is only the second song – and first hip hop track – to pass through the system on its way to the stars.
“Both space exploration and Missy Elliott’s art have been about pushing boundaries,” says Brittany Brown, the director at NASA’s Washington headquarters who initially pitched the idea to Missy’s team. “Missy has a track record of infusing space-centric storytelling and futuristic visuals in her music videos, so the opportunity to collaborate on something out of this world is truly fitting.”
Several space missions have Venus in their sights in the coming decade, including NASA’s DAVINCI and ESA’s EnVision, spurred on by the possibility of life on the planet’s super-hot surface, or maybe further up in the clouds, where the temperatures are cooler. Fingers crossed we find some newly-minted Missy Elliott fans when we get there.