CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- This just in: Hundreds of schoolteachers in Houston reported the latest Elvis sighting Friday --- on the mothership, no less.
Circling 240 miles (384 kilometers) above Earth, International Space Station (ISS) flight engineer Carl Walz treated a group of educators to the first-ever Elvis impression from outer space.
| Elvis Sings From Orbit |
| Expedition Four flight engineer Carl Walz does his best Elvis impersonation for a gathering of students and educators meeting in Houston on Feb. 1, 2002. Watch the video. |
Coming amid a space-to-ground question-and-answer session with teachers attending an ISS Educators Conference near Johnson Space Center in Houston, Walz belted out a his own rendition of "Heartbreak Hotel:"
"Well since I left my baby;
"I found a new place to dwell.
"It's 400 kilometers in the air.
"It's called space station Alpha.
"But baby it's lonely.
"Oh it's so lonely.
"But I'll be back in May.
"Ohhhhhhh, yeah."
Cheesy as it seemed, the mob at the conference went pancake, whooping and hollering and clapping as Walz' two crewmates -- Russian cosmonaut Yuri Onufrienko and fellow NASA astronaut Daniel Bursch -- chuckled up on the station.
Wowing crowds with Elvis impersonations is nothing new to Walz, 46, a former military flight test engineer who is in the midst of a six-month station tour that's due to end in mid-May.
In fact, his penchant for Presley earned him both the nickname "Elvis" and an on-and-off gig as lead singer of the all-astronaut band "Max Q," which is named after the aeronautical term for the portion of flight during which a rocket is placed under maximum aerodynamic pressure.
Asked by a teacher what kind of music he prefers to play, Walz said, "Well, I like easy rock."
He failed, however, to add the real reason the band focuses on that genre.
As NASA astronaut and Max Q keyboard player Susan Helms once told SPACE.com: "If it's easy, we play it."
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