N° 26–2025: Media advisory: ESA and Vienna celebrate 200 years of Strauss

The Blue Danube Waltz – or An der schönen, blauen Donau - has long been celebrated as the ultimate ‘Anthem of Space’ – the famous soundtrack of space docking in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Now, ESA will broadcast a live production of Strauss’s Blue Danube deep into space, creating a timeless musical bridge between humankind and the Universe. The 13 743 individual notes of the piece will each correspond to an 'ambassador' who claims their favourite note online. The Waltz Into Space website also details the key and the instrument of the note you pick.

The agency’s 35 m-diameter deep-space dish antenna at Cebreros, Spain, will demonstrate its technical prowess on 31 May by transmitting The Blue Danube to its destined home among the stars, as performed in front of a live audience at Vienna’s MAK - Museum of Applied Arts by the renowned Wiener Symphoniker (Vienna Symphony Orchestra) conducted by Petr Popelka.

“Music connects us all through time and space in a very particular way. The European Space Agency is pleased to share the stage with Johann Strauss II and open the imaginations of future space scientists and explorers who may one day journey to the anthem of space,” said ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher.

The Cebreros station, which itself is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, is routinely used to communicate with ESA missions such as Juice, BepiColombo and Hera, and with missions of partner agencies under resource-sharing agreements. Throughout two decades of stellar technological achievement, it has supported well-known missions such as Rosetta, Mars Express and NASA’s Perseverance rover. In a typical month it delivers over 500 hours of flawless spacecraft connection time.

The essential task of all ESA tracking stations is to communicate with spacecraft – to transmit commands and receive scientific data and spacecraft status information. Our technically advanced stations can track spacecraft almost anywhere – circling Earth, watching the Sun, orbiting at the scientifically crucial Sun-Earth Lagrange points or voyaging deep into our Solar System. 

The Cebreros facility is part of ESA’s global Estrack network, comprising six stations in six countries, including two other deep-space stations in Argentina and Australia. The network is expanding with the construction of a new deep-space antenna in Western Australia.

“We are delighted that Cebreros station can support this artistic project using spare capacity to transmit a signal to the Universe,” said Octave Procope-Mamert, responsible for ground infrastructure for spacecraft operations at ESA. “Sending a work of musical genius to the stars highlights the technical genius that we apply every day in flying and communicating with European missions discovering new knowledge throughout the Solar System.”

“Strauss reaches beyond the Solar System,” said Norbert Kettner, Director of the Vienna Tourist Board. “Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ made the Danube Waltz the anthem of space – the absence of the most famous of all waltzes from the 1977 Voyager Golden Record is a cosmic mistake that we are correcting with ‘Waltz into Space’. At a distance of more than 25 billion kilometres from Earth, Voyager 1 is the most distant human-made object in space. As part of our mission with the European Space Agency, we are sending ‘By the Beautiful Blue Danube’ in the direction of the space probe that is already travelling through interstellar space. ‘Waltz into Space’ will therefore have an impact beyond our Solar System and also inspire people on Earth to experience culture in Vienna.”

Follow Live

In addition to the live performance in Vienna at the MAK - Museum of Applied Arts, the public will have an opportunity to follow the concert as follows:

• Vienna – streamed live in the Strandbar Herrmann, from 8:30 pm (CEST)
• Madrid – screening at the Madrid Planetarium, from 8:30 pm (CEST)

• New York City – outdoor screen at Bryant Park, from 14:30 (UTC−4)

The transmission of the Blue Danube Waltz can also be followed via a global livestream on space.vienna.info and the Vienna Tourist Board's Instagram channel @vienna. 

Media

Media representatives are invited to participate in events in Vienna, Austria, Cebreros, Spain and in New York.

The Vienna concert will be prefaced by a few welcome words by the CEO of the Vienna Tourist Board Norbert Kettner, ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher, the Intendant of the Wiener Symphoniker Jan Nast and host Bless Amada (Burgtheater actor). At 20:30, the Wiener Symphoniker (Vienna Symphony Orchestra) will start to play and the highlight of the concert will be the Blue Danube Waltz, which will be digitised and transmitted via ESA’s deep-space communication facilities at Cebreros, Spain.

ESA will organise a press visit to Cebreros station on 31 May to watch the transmission live on site, with bus transfer provided to/from Madrid. ESA will provide media a site tour of the station and technical facilities together with an information brief, and journalists are invited to join the local celebration event including invited representatives from ESA and the Spanish aerospace community.

Registration

For the Vienna event, please revert to isabella.graf@wien.info

For the media programme in Cebreros, please express your interest  by Wednesday 28 May at 15:00 CEST by selecting and completing the relevant form at https://blogs.esa.int/forms/esa-media-briefing-form.

How to get to Cebreros:

-            By car: https://www.esa.int/About_Us/ESAC/Getting_to_Cebreros

-            By bus: We offer round-trip shuttle service between Madrid and Cebreros for your convenience. Meeting point: https://maps.app.goo.gl/3UNCVc6ENAkWJmJB6

Please indicate your preferred option to help us organise the best experience for you.

Contacts for media

For Cebreros/Spain: Beatriz Arias (beatriz.arias@ext.esa.int) and Eva Martin (eva.martinpujol@esa.int)  or media@esa.int

For Vienna: Sabine Bellil (sabine.bellil@wien.info) and Kerstin Schwandtner (kerstin.schwandtner@austria.info)

Images

Images of Waltz into Space & Vienna

https://www.esa.int/esearch?q=cebreros+images

ESA's Photo Library for Professionals: 

https://www.esa-photolibrary.com/  

Terms and conditions for using ESA images: 

www.esa.int/spaceinimages/ESA_Multimedia/Copyright_Notice_Images  

For questions or more information related to ESA images, please contact directly spaceinimages@esa.int  

Videos

ESA's Video Library for Professionals: 

https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Videos  

Terms and conditions for using ESA videos: 

https://www.esa.int/spaceinvideos/Terms_and_Conditions  

Social media

Follow ESA on: 

X : @esa

Bluesky:@esa.int

Instagram: Europeanspaceagency 

Facebook: EuropeanSpaceAgency 

TikTok: europeanspaceagency 

Threads: europeanspaceagency 

YouTube: ESA

About the European Space Agency

The European Space Agency (ESA) provides Europe’s gateway to space.  

ESA is an intergovernmental organisation, created in 1975, with the mission to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space delivers benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.  

ESA has 23 Member States: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia are Associate Members.  

ESA has established formal cooperation with four Member States of the EU. Canada takes part in some ESA programmes under a Cooperation Agreement.  

By coordinating the financial and intellectual resources of its members, ESA can undertake programmes and activities far beyond the scope of any single European country. It is working in particular with the EU on implementing the Galileo and Copernicus programmes as well as with Eumetsat for the development of meteorological missions.  

Learn more about ESA at www.esa.int