|
The Grammy award-winning singer-songwriter is
scheduled to sing the Ray Charles version of "America The
Beautiful" during the U.S. space agency's broadcast of the
countdown to the launch of the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover
Mission at Cape Canaveral in Florida.
Porter said he will perform from his living room in Bakersfield,
California because of the coronavirus pandemic. His record label
said Porter was invited after NASA officials heard "Concorde."
"I wrote the song when I was on an airplane thinking about the
idea of ascension, both in the body but in the mind as well.
Flying into the stratosphere," Porter told Reuters. "And so,
anyway, NASA caught wind of it and they were interested... in
partnering in the release of the song and the release of the
video."
In the "Concorde" music video, Porter is dressed as an astronaut
and appears opposite his young son, Demyan.
"When I'm floating around in the galaxy, hanging out with the
stars, the sweetest thing to do is to come back down, to drop
down to and to be on the soil and to be with your loved ones.
And that's what the song is about," Porter said.
Porter said he has been a spaceflight fan since watching NASA's
first shuttle launch in 1981. He remembers as a 9 year old being
concerned about how the astronauts would return to Earth and
making sure they landed back at Edwards Air Force Base, not far
from his childhood home.
The robotic rover is intended to study Martian geology and seek
signs of ancient microbial life.
(Reporting by Reuters TV; Writing by Will Dunham; Editing by
Rosalba O'Brien)
[© 2020 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2020 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
|
|
