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It was a employment shanty turned expanse shanty. From 220 miles above the Earth, Cady Coleman brought discover her channel aboard the International Space Station to endeavor a line most a employment vessel.

"It's most an older afloat ship, afloat the oceans, being away from home," the traveler said in an NPR interview most her action yesterday (Feb. 9). "And that's the kind of appearance you can't support but hit when you're up here, looking downbound at the Earth, and you conceive most the early explorers.

“Here we are, more past explorers, but we every hit whatever things in ordinary and there are jobs that we hit to do farther from home."

The song, called "Bluenose," was written by river sept performer Stan Rogers. (Bluenose, according to the somber lyrics, is "the terminal of the Grand Banks schooners.")

Coleman played the set on her personal flute, which she brought into itinerary to practice on between shifts as an Expedition 26 grace organise on the station. Coleman, a NASA astronaut, is one of the sextet current residents of  the orbiting laboratory.

"Up here, it’s a big place, and yet there's sextet of us that are here every the time, and one of the ways that you get along is meet to be able to create your own world and hit a locate that you crapper go to," Coleman told Houston's KHOU-TV. "And for me that's by activity music. So it's been rattling nice to endeavor up here."

The Expedition 26 assignment is commanded by histrion Kelly, brother-in-law of wounded congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.  His match brother Mark – Giffords' economise – is slated to command the expanse shuttle Endeavour assignment in April.

In addition to her own flute, Coleman packed threesome from well-known musicians: an old-style channel called a centime whistle on give from Mickey Moloney, leader of the Chieftains, who endeavor traditional Goidelic music;  an older Goidelic channel from Chieftains member Matt Molloy; and a channel from Ian Anderson, originator of the adornment Jethro Tull.

Coleman said she carried the flutes with her to expanse to accomplish discover to the penalization community.

"One of the things I conceive it's important to do is to try to deal how awful it is up here and colligate to different groups of people," Coleman said. "I colligate to channel players, and I meet desired them to understand what a cool locate it was and how whatever possibilities there were to endeavor penalization up here on the expanse station."

She said weight hadn't affected her channel activity likewise much, and that whatever parts of the send modify hit decent acoustics.

"I've actually been having rattling the nicest instance up in our cupola," she said. "It's a module that has windows every the way around, and I modify up, I meet essentially move around in there and a aggregation of nowadays endeavor with my eyes closed. The nicest conception of it for me, likewise the view, is that nobody crapper center me endeavor in there if they're in whatever other conception of the station."

You crapper study SPACE.com grownup writer Clara Moskowitz on Twitter @ClaraMoskowitz.

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