Mikel Galicia
Audio By Carbonatix
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Floating 240,000 miles from Earth, wrapped in the quiet vacuum of deep space, the Artemis II crew woke up to the sound of Texas.
Specifically, they woke up to the rusty, road-worn croon of Charley Crockett. As the Orion capsule zipped around the lunar surface on flight day nine, NASA queued up “Lonesome Drifter” — the title track of one of Crockett’s 2025 albums — for the astronauts’ morning playlist. You can easily imagine the crew gazing out at the desolate, beautiful cratered landscape while Crockett sings his heart out. It is a song built for wandering, perfectly matched to the headspace of humans on the ultimate road trip.
Texas and space exploration share deep roots. Houston remains the historic nerve center for reaching the stars, but now, North Texas gets to ride shotgun. Crockett, who cut his teeth busking on the streets of Dallas, leaned right into the cosmic moment.
“NASA radio got a country radio beat,” Crockett shared in a post on social media. “Can’t spell Crockett without rocket.” He cheekily added that the moon was “almost far enough away from music row.”
NASA officially marked the milestone online, writing, “Lean on me, brother, ‘cause I understand… Flight Day 9 for Artemis II astronauts begins with Charley Crockett’s ‘Lonesome Drifter.’ This is the last full day before the crew returns to Earth.”
Replying to the space agency, Crockett reflected on his wild trajectory from the pavement to the stars.
“When I was playing on the street in New York years back, a woman named Angel told me I had to start down low if I wanted to get high,” he wrote. “Lord’ve mercy. She was right.”
The cosmos might be vast, cold and empty, but thanks to a lonesome drifter from Texas, space can sound a whole lot like home.
