Watch Carl Sagan’s “A Glorious Dawn” Become the First Vinyl Record Played in Space, Courtesy of Jack White

Third Man Records, the record label cre­at­ed by The White Stripes’ Jack White, announced Sat­ur­day that they’ve made his­to­ry by launch­ing a “space-proof” turntable into space (near space, to be pre­cise), using a high-alti­tude bal­loon to reach a peak alti­tude of 94,413 feet. Their goal was to “send a vinyl record up as high as pos­si­ble and doc­u­ment it being played there.” And that they did.

Accord­ing to their press release, for “the entire hour and twen­ty min­utes of ascen­sion, the Icarus turntable faith­ful­ly played Carl Sagan’s “A Glo­ri­ous Dawn” (from “Cos­mos” by Sym­pho­ny of Sci­ence com­pos­er John Boswell) on repeat, using an impres­sive­ly stur­dy phono car­tridge and sty­lus as well as an onboard flight com­put­er pro­grammed with a few dif­fer­ent actions to keep the record play­ing while it was safe to do so.” Even­tu­al­ly, when the bal­loon popped (around the 83rd minute), the turntable went into “tur­bu­lence mode” and safe­ly sur­vived the descent back down to earth. You can watch the entire his­toric voyage–all two hours of it–in the video above.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch His­toric Footage of Joseph Kittinger’s 102,800 Jump from Space (1960)

How Vinyl Records Are Made: A Primer from 1956

How to Clean Your Vinyl Records with Wood Glue