Commander Chris Hadfield signs off from space with epic cover of David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’

Commander Chris Hadfield is one of the most memorable astronauts to have gone into space, so it was fitting that his farewell moment to the world saw him record the first ever music video from space.

Ahead of his return to Earth on Monday after five months at the International Space Station (ISS), the 53-year-old Canadian astronaut fittingly covered the David Bowie classic ‘Space Oddity’ in a poignant video.

Hadfield has maintained strong links to folks at home, having entertained his 700,000-plus Twitter followers with regular photos and commentary, and taken part in a Reddit AMA interview, but music was always a focus for him. He recorded the first song in space last December, and, speaking before his latest mission, he admitted that he would record a range of songs in space.

The quality of the Bowie cover is surprisingly good, and the space station had been specifically set up to allow him to record. Hadfield plays an acoustic guitar from Canada’s Larrivée Parlor, which has an in-haul pickup plugged into a laptop running Quark. A number of free-standing mics are plugged into a digital camera to provide the visual and acoustics.

Here he discusses playing music in space in more detail:

Headline image via Alexander Nemenov / Getty Images