Ilan Eshkeri

An emotionally charged, immersive live show that uses a spellbinding combination of music and imagery to recreate the profound cognitive shift astronauts experience in space is about to premiere at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

The event – which takes place this weekend – marks the beginning of a European tour that was created thanks to an artistic collaboration between ESA and British composer Ilan Eshkeri.

The beginning of the project can be traced back to 2015, when British ESA astronaut Peake contacted Eshkeri ahead of his Principia mission.

From here, the idea snowballed – Eshkeri worked with ESA to explore the agency’s facilities and trawl through its media archives, which served as inspiration for the project.

During this journey, Eshkeri experienced the feeling of weightlessness on a micro-gravity parabolic flight, travelled to Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana to see an Ariane 5 launch, and witnessed aurora borealis from ESA’s Kiruna station in northern Sweden.