Sir Paul McCartney gives an out of this world performance

Music concert beamed to international space station

11 November 2005 19:14 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Sir Paul McCartney is set to become the world's first musician to give a live performance to an audience in space.

Sir Paul will beam the Beatles song "Good Day Sunshine" and the track English Tea from his latest album Chaos and Creation in the Back Yard during his concert in Anaheim, California on the 12 November to the crew at the International Space Station 350 kilometers away orbiting the earth.

The move comes after McCartney learnt that NASA had used the song to tell the crew of the space shuttle Discovery that a safe landing was possible due to favourable weather conditions.

The singer said that he NASA had done the Beatles a favour by playing their song and it was time that the favour was returned.

Sir Paul isn't the first musician to have his music blast out into space.

The UK band Blur, fronted by Damon Alban, penned a theme tune that called Beagle 2, that was due to play when the European Space Agency drone landed on Mars. Unfortunately for the band, the robot made it to the surface, but never sent back a signal to NASA.

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