Born 61 Years Ago Today, Her Music Made It All The Way To Outer Space

Shania Twain generated a mighty string of massive country and pop crossover hits in the late 1990s. And while her upbeat jams and tender ballads were popular all over the world, some of her songs have even been blasted into the galaxy. The iconic, consensus-building, genre-blending vocalist was born on August 28, 1965.

Born in Windsor, Ontario, as Eileen Edwards, the future Shania Twain experienced a lot of tragedy early on but ultimately found solace and a calling in music. Embracing a country milieu, Twain broke out with the 1995 album "The Woman in Me," which spawned four country chart-toppers and sold an impressive 12 million copies. Twain's broad appeal only grew with her next two multi-platinum, hit-generating juggernauts, "Come On Over" and "Up!"

One track from both of those latter LPs would go where few songs have gone before: Into space, to help NASA astronauts complete their important scientific work.

Since the 1960s, NASA has used music to signify a new working way to astronauts. Seen as a kind method to wake up sleeping space workers denied the natural rhythms of the day from sunrises and sunsets because of their location off-Earth, the first wake-up song was a custom-written parody of "Hello Dolly" delivered in person at Mission Control by Jack Jones, who helped a '60s rock song win an ill-gotten Grammy, to Gemini 6 space capsule occupants Tom Stafford and Wally Schirra. It became a tradition and then standard operating procedure, and of the many songs used on many missions, two by country-pop superstar Shania Twain have been employed.

During STS-104, a journey by the Space Shuttle Atlantis to the International Space Station, astronauts woke up to the folky romantic ballad "Honey, I'm Home," Twain's No. 1 country hit from 1997's "Come On Over," one of the best-selling albums of the past 35 years. That fulfilled a request by mission specialist Janet Kavandi. 

In August 2007, the Space Shuttle Endeavor embarked on mission STS-118, bound for the ISS. Among the crew was astronaut Dave Williams of the Canadian Space Agency. On the fifth day of the trip, Mission Control targeted him with the wake-up song: The bubbly title track and smash hit from fellow Canadian Twain's 2002 album "Up!"