NASA Just Transmitted a Hip Hop Song by Missy Elliot to Venus

Hip-hop has officially been transmitted into deep space. Earlier this week, the popular 1997 song, “The Rain” (Supa Dupa Fly), by rapper Missy Elliot was transmitted from the DSN’s Goldstone complex to Venus, about 158 million miles (254 million kilometers) away. The lyrics from Elliott’s hip-hop song “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” were beamed to the second planet from the Sun via NASA’s Deep Space Network in a transmission sent by the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California at 10:05 a.m. PDT on Friday, July 12. So why is NASA broadcasting hip-hop into space? In recent years, the space agency has integrated pop culture and space exploration to attract the masses and make space digestible and reachable for everyone. Space exploration, in other words, is not just for astronauts and people who enjoy nerding out over planets and distant star systems; it’s for all of us. Branching out and reaching a larger audience showcases the diversity of our planet, which parallels the diversity of the universe and the many cosmic mysteries it holds.  “I still can’t believe I’m going out of this world with NASA through the Deep Space Network when ‘The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)’ becomes the first...