ISS Commander Chris Hadfield signs off with Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ [Video]

Being an astronaut has always been one of the ultimate “cool” career options out there. There can be little doubt though that Commander Chris Hadfield has taken it to another level.

The 53-year-old Canadian astronaut has sent tweets to his 700 000+ followers from space, done a Reddit AMA and now, on the verge of his return from five months on the International Space Station, recorded a David Bowie cover.

The cover, which comes with an appropriately epic video, required the space station to be set up specifically for recording. Hadfield plays an acoustic guitar made by Canada’s Larrivée Parlor which, according to The Next Web, has an in-haul pickup plugged into a laptop running Quark. That particular guitar has actually been on the space station for some time now, and has a twin on the ground used to show people what they have available on the station.

The visuals and acoustics meanwhile come courtesy of a number of free-standing mics plugged into a digital camera.

This isn’t the first time the astronaut has recorded in space. He managed that feat back in December, becoming the first astronaut to do so. In fact, prior to the mission he said he would set out to record a number of songs in space and discussed some of the challenges he would face.