1. Ad Lunam
Visual Content by Lindsey Tober, Sarah Gordon, and Cathy Ching
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
“We choose to go to the moon…”
With these words of President John F. Kennedy, humanity dared to look skyward—not with myth or metaphor, but with machines and resolve.
Ad Lunam opens with quiet reverence: a view of the vast, star-strewn sky above and a flickering flame below. That ancient fire, once our only light in the darkness, transforms—rising, roaring—into the ignition of the Saturn V rocket. Thus begins the sonic retelling of one of humanity’s most daring journeys: the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon.
This movement captures the evolution of human wonder into action, chronicling the arc from stargazing to spaceflight. With sweeping gestures and intimate motifs, the music explores the themes of curiosity, ambition, awe, and triumph. Dehlinger’s score mirrors the tension of launch, the silence of space, and the weightless grace of orbit. As Earth recedes and the Moon draws near, we are reminded that this mission was not just a technological milestone, but a profoundly human achievement.
NASA content creators Cathy Ching, Lindsey Tober and Sarah Gordon created a compelling visual narrative to inspire Dehlinger’s score. Ad Lunam invites us to relive the legacy of Apollo 11—an odyssey born from fire, propelled by vision, and fulfilled in footprints upon a distant world.
2. Outpost in the Sky
Visual Content by Mitch Youts
NASA’s Johnson Space Center
In the second movement, we leave Earth’s surface behind and journey to humanity’s Outpost in the Sky—the International Space Station. This movement is a soaring yet intimate tribute to the ISS: a marvel of engineering, a cradle of scientific discovery, and a place where cultures, languages, and lives intertwine 250 miles above our planet.
Opening with a majestic flyaround captured from the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, the music reflects the serenity and power of the orbiting outpost as it glides through the silence of space. From there, we move into the Cupola—the station’s panoramic observatory module—where shutters open to reveal breathtaking oblique views of Earth, sunrises over cloud ridges, and the delicate curve of the planet wrapped in aurora.
Through NASA visual storyteller Mitch Youts’s remarkable footage—curated over more than a decade of direct work with astronauts—we witness the ISS not just as a laboratory, but as a home. Time lapses of lightning storms off the coast of South Africa sync with energetic bursts of orchestral percussion. Soft, sweeping melodies accompany scenes of astronauts growing lettuce, tomatoes, and peppers—experiments in sustainability that hint at humanity’s interplanetary future. These scientific moments blend seamlessly with scenes of joy and camaraderie: shared meals, makeshift holiday celebrations, laughter, dance, and the rituals of daily life—all while floating in zero gravity.
Each frame serves as a tribute to the astronauts whose lives and labors define this spacebound outpost. These include Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski, Tracy Dyson, Jeanette Epps, Butch Wilmore, Suni Williams, Don Pettit, Robert Hines, Kjell Lindgren, Christina Koch, Joe Acaba, Megan McArthur, Serena Auñón-Chancellor, Alexander Gerst, Samantha Cristoforetti, Drew Morgan, and Shannon Walker—individuals whose presence aboard ISS brings this human endeavor to life.
The movement closes with the journey home, as our view turns from the station to the returning capsule. Dehlinger’s score softens, echoing both the physical descent and the emotional weight of leaving behind that fragile outpost in the sky—a place where science and spirit meet, and where Earth is always visible through the window, a luminous reminder of why we explore.
3. Interlude
Interlude is a short tone poem that musically bridges the legacy of Apollo with NASA's renewed ambition to return to the moon through the Artemis missions.
It opens with the warm, introspective voice of the English horn, its solitary melody capturing the hush of first wonder. It lifts our gaze upward, traces constellations, and imagines what lies beyond. Meditative in spirit yet tinged with quiet grandeur, the music reflects the serenity of the night sky as well as the bold human impulse to rise toward it.
The bassoon soon takes up the theme, its earthier timbre lending weight and contour, as if those early dreams are settling into intention. As the orchestral fabric widens, the melody gains sweep and assurance, gathering momentum like a horizon slowly brightening.
It then wanes to reveal the alto flute, which takes up the melody in a more intimate light. With its dusky, sultry timbre, the alto flute seems to hover between breath and starlight, fluttering gently as if suspended in low gravity. This moment feels inward and human again—curiosity refined into resolve—before the music steels itself for what lies ahead.
The journey reaches its most striking turn when the timpani claim the theme, articulating it with resolute clarity. It is an unexpected, ceremonial transformation where the music finds its purpose. What began as a reflective pastoral idea rises in triumph, infused with the energy of liftoff and the enduring promise of discovery that foreshadows the closing movement, Starbound.
4. Starbound
Visual Content by Beth Anthony
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Starbound is a meditation on humankind’s enduring urge to look beyond the horizon—a kinetic dialogue between image and sensation, sound and space. Created in collaboration with NASA visual storyteller Beth Anthony, this movement pairs Dehlinger’s shimmering orchestrations with stunning real and speculative footage from the frontiers of space exploration. It invites us to consider not only where we are going, but why we feel compelled to go.
It opens with visceral momentum: Artemis astronauts don their suits, the Space Launch System rocket roars into the sky, and the score surges with the raw power as alternating compound rhythms underscore our defiance of gravity and silence. As the journey extends beyond the pull of Earth, the tone shifts. Vastness replaces velocity. The music and visuals become more contemplative, reflecting the inner journey that accompanies our outward one.
Here, exploration becomes a mirror. The search for life beyond our world entwines with a deeper search for origin, connection, and meaning. Through the lens of robotic emissaries—Voyager, OSIRIS-REx, Europa Clipper—space is rendered not only as a frontier of technology, but as a canvas for our longing, our questions, our quiet insistence that there is more to understand.
As the movement nears its conclusion, we drift into the imagined: human outposts under alien suns, red deserts traversed by astronauts, skies unfamiliar yet full of promise. These moments are not predictions, but invitations—visions that blur the line between reality and possibility.
Starbound leaves us with a call to remain curious. To keep seeking. To move beyond the edge of what is known—not merely to conquer distance, but to better understand what it means to be human.