Garage rocker and vinyl entrepreneur Jack White and his company, Third Man Records, made history today by successfully playing a vinyl record in space. A spacecraft dubbed The Icarus carried a "space proof" record player to the outer limits of earth's atmosphere and played a gold master copy of Carl Sagan’s “A Glorious Dawn”.
White's plan was initially mentioned in 2012 and was carried out in collaboration with former NASA engineer Kevin Carrico and the SATINS or Students and Teachers in Near Space program. The craft reached an elevation of 94,413 feet before falling back to the earth's surface.
In a statement today White explained: “Our main goal from inception to completion of this project was to inject imagination and inspiration into the daily discourse of music and vinyl lovers. Combining our creative impulses with those of discovery and science is our passion, and even on the scale that we are working with here, it was exhilarating to decide to do something that hasn’t been done before and to work towards its completion. And, it brings us great fulfillment to pay tribute to the incredible scientist and dreamer that Carl Sagan was. We hope that in meeting our goal we inspire others to dream big and start their own missions, whatever they may be."
Check out the video below for an explanation of the mission from Third Man Records.
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