Star Trek Music Beamed Up To Shuttle

The actor who played Captain James T. Kirk on the original Star Trek television series beamed up a special message to the final crew of the good ship Discovery at the top of their day this morning.

With Alexander Courage’s theme song playing, William Shatner started with the television show's famous introduction: "Space, the final frontier."

But from there it was a tribute to Discovery, NASA's shuttle fleet leader, which is in the home stretch of its 39th and final flight:

"These have been the voyages of the Space Shuttle Discovery. Her 30 year mission: To seek out new science. To build new outposts. To bring nations together on the final frontier. To boldly go, and do, what no spacecraft has done before."

The “Theme from Star Trek” tallied the second most votes in a public contest to name best wake-up music in the history of the 30-year-old shuttle program. The Star Trek theme was selected from a group of 40 candidate songs. Listen to it here.

The top vote-getter -- Blue Sky by Big Head Todd and the Monsters -- will be the wake-up music at 3:23 a.m. Tuesday for Discovery's final full day in space. The song is a tribute written for the first post-Columbia flight, STS-114.

Shuttle and International Space Station flight directors are "go for undocking" on time at 7 a.m. You can watch live here in The Flame Trench as Discovery makes its final departure and flyaround of the station. Click the NASA TV box on the right to launch our NASA TV viewer and be sure to refresh this page for periodic updates.