Kraftwerk teamed up with German ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst last weekend to perform ‘Spacelab’ live.
The special in-orbit collaboration took place during the electronica music pioneers’ set at the Jazz Open Festival in Stuttgart, Germany on July 20th, with the astronaut performing alongside the band in real time from the International Space Station.
A video posted Saturday by the European Space Agency shows Gerst playing the melody of the track ‘Spacelab‘ using a tablet configured with a virtual synthesizer.
After a few minutes, Gerst gave also a little space lesson: “The ISS is a Man-Machine, the most complex and valuable machine humankind has ever built,” he explained.
“Here in the European Columbus Laboratory, the successor to the Spacelab, the European Space Agency (ESA) is researching things that will improve daily life on Earth. More than 100 different nations work together peacefully here and achieve things that a single nation could never achieve. We are developing technologies onboard the ISS to grow beyond our current horizons and prepare to take further species into spaces, to the Moon and Mars.”
