Astronaut Chris Hadfield Performs David Bowie's 'Space Oddity' From… Space

By Joanna Stern May 13, 2013

Image credit: Chris Hadfield/YouTube

Today Chris Hadfield returns to Earth as the brave outgoing commander of the International Space Station. But he also returns as a rock star. Literally.

On Sunday, the Canadian astronaut released a YouTube video of him performing David Bowie's "Space Oddity" in space. In the video, which has been viewed over a half a million times in less than 24 hours, Hadfield hammed it up for the camera as he crooned about Major Tom, the intrepid, lonely and ultimately doomed space adventurer in the song. Hadfield stared wistfully out the window and strummed on an acoustic guitar aboard the space station.

Hadfield tweeted about the video on Sunday, May 12 at 5:00 p.m. EST. "With deference to the genius of David Bowie, here's Space Oddity, recorded on Station. A last glimpse of the World," Hadfield, who has been active on Twitter and YouTube while in outer space, tweeted out to his followers. The tweet, as of this writing, now has over 14,000 retweets.

The "Space Oddity" video even earned a response from Bowie himself, who tweeted out to Hadfield:

The music video isn't the first humorous video the 53-year-old astronaut has shared while looking down at earth. On May 3, he tweeted a video of him having fun with a Quick-Don oxygen mask. In a separate video he sang a duet with Barenaked Ladies' Ed Robertson.

In December, Commander Hadfield launched aboard a Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station. Luckily for him, he won't suffer the fate of Major Tom, who was lost at space at the end of the song. Hadfield will head back to earth in a Russian Soyuz capsule on this evening and will land in Kazakhstan.

And with that we leave you with the video everyone is talking about.

Kirit Radia and Jean Fievet contributed to this report.