Here’s a SpaceX waltz you won’t see every day.
A fun (and acrobatic) video of astronauts on the International Space Station reveals the lighter side of space travel as the fly in formation in SpaceX spacesuits while preparing to return to Earth.
The new video, shared by European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer, shows the four astronauts from NASA and SpaceX’s Crew-3 mission as they paused while checking their spacesuits the week last. The video is set to music from the waltz “The Blue Danube” by Johann Strauss II and shows the astronauts performing intricate choreography as they navigate past each other in weightlessness.
“In case anyone wonders how astronauts check their space suits,” Maurer wrote as he shared the video on Twitter. “We call it the ‘costume waltz’. I think microgravity and this antics with @Astro_Raja, @AstroMarshburn & Kayla.”
Strauss’ “Blue Danube” waltz has a long history of being set to spaceflight antics. In the 1968 sci-fi film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” director Stanley Kubrick paired music with a spaceplane trip to a space station to show the complex ballet of spaceflight.
And in a more humorous approach, Homer Simpson floated gracefully through a space shuttle while chasing chips in the 1994 episode Deep Space Homer as Strauss’ signature song played in the background.
The Crew-3 astronauts apparently also held a photoshoot in their SpaceX suits, take a portrait by forming a wheel.
Maurer and his Crew-3 teammates – NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Thomas Marshburn and Kayla Barron – returned to Earth May 6 on SpaceX’s Dragon Endurance ending a six-month mission to the International Space Station. The astronauts spent 176 days in space and landed off the coast of Tampa, Florida to cap off their spaceflight.
The Crew-3 astronauts returned to Earth just over a week after SpaceX launched another crew to the space station for NASA. This mission, called Crew-4, sent three NASA astronauts and one European astronaut to the station on April 27 to begin their own six-month journey.
Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @DonaldTrump. follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and instagram.