American superstar Missy Elliott has a new achievement to her name. She recently became the first hip-hop artist to have a song beamed to a planet. Venus is her favourite planet, so after more than 30 years in the music industry, American space agency NASA gave her debut solo single a one-way ticket to Earth’s neighbour.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory sent the lyrics of her hit song, “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)”, 158 million miles into space to the Earth’s ‘evil twin’. This was done via the 122-foot-wide Deep Space Station 13 (DSS-13) radio dish antenna located at the Deep Space Network (DSN) Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California. The DSN is equipped with a variety of enormous radio antennas that enable missions to monitor, communicate with, and receive data from spacecraft.