Blue Danube waltz to be blasted into deep space

Austria wants to correct a “cosmic mistake”

When people hear The Blue Danube, they often immediately think of Stanley Kubrick’s movie 2001: A Space Odyssey”. The shot of the space station elegantly rotating to the sound of the famous waltz has forever associated the Austrian composer Johann Strauss II with deep space.

2025 is a special year for both space and Strauss, as the composer will celebrate his 200th anniversary (or rather, his fans will celebrate it for him) while the European Space Agency (ESA) is celebrating its 50th anniversary.

So over a coffee break, someone had a bright idea: why not send the Blue Danube into space?

But wait: didn’t someone do this already? Wasn’t the music sent on the Voyager 1 Golden Record that was launched in 1977 to explore the confines of the galaxy and carry masterpieces of humanity with it in the hope of meeting intelligent life? No, “and this is a cosmic mistake that we are correcting with ‘Waltz into Space’," says Norbert Kettner, Director of the Vienna Tourist Board.

Catching up with the Space Probe

The idea is brilliant: they want to transmit a performance of the Blue Danube and other pieces at the Voyager space probe. At more than 25 billion kilometers from Earth, Voyager 1 is the most distant man-made object in space.

This is not something average tourist boards do. So enter the European Space Agency. “In 2025 we have a wonderful double anniversary," according to ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher. "As part of our mission with the European Space Agency, we are sending ‘Blue Danube’ in the direction of the space probe that is already traveling through interstellar space."

The interstellar concert

The hour-long "interstellar concert" by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra will take place on May 31, 2025 at 20:30 CET at the MAK Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna. It will be transmitted in real time to the ESA’s Deep Space Antenna DSA 2 in Cebreros, Spain.

From there, it will be transmitted “to infinity and beyond” as an electromagnetic wave at the speed of light in the direction of Voyager 1. Some 23 hours later, the signal will catch up with NASA’s space probe.

“The music will reach the orbit of the Moon after approximately 1.34 seconds,” explains Aschbacher. “After 23 hours and 3 minutes, it will catch up with Voyager 1 and venture even deeper into interstellar space. Strauss’ waltz will then travel through space forever."

"This broadcast will be a special moment," says ESA's Aschbacher in quite an under-statement. "It will show that music – just like space – connects all of humanity.”

Streamed on earth

The historic concert will also be streamed on earth. In Vienna, there will be a public screening for the local community at the Danube Canal, in New York at Bryant Park, and in Spain right next to the antenna. The mission can also be followed via a global livestream and the Vienna Tourist Board’s Instagram channel.

Amidst all this space-travelling data, there is room for you. Music lovers can sponsor one of the 13,743 notes from Strauss' masterpiece through the 'Space Notes' initiative on the mission's website. It's free to take part and all supporters' names will symbolically accompany the work into space.

(Michael Leahy. Source: Euronews et al. Photo: © WienTourismus/Peter Rigaud)