CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – How do you spell cool? N-A-S-A.
President Barack Obama already told us so.
Now, a new YouTube video that went viral this week confirms it. [WATCH VIDEO BELOW]
The playful spoof video, called "We're NASA and We Know It," became one of the top 10 trending posts on Twitter last night, Local 6 News partner Florida Today reported.
The song is a good-natured parody of the LMFAO hit "Sexy and I know it" and features the space agency's spot-on landing of its six-wheeled rover earlier this month on Mars, and the back-slapping celebrations that followed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
"Crane lower that rover. Crane lower that rover," is the refrain, playing off Curiosity's nail-biting descent to the surface of the red planet. The complex atmospheric entry and descent involved a supersonic parachute, retrorockets and a novel "sky crane" system that gently delivered Curiosity to the floor of ancient Gale Crater. The rover landed near an 18,000-foot-tall mountain that scientists hope will reveal answers about the geological history of the fourth planet from the sun.
"Kickin at my console. This is what I see. Data streaming back from Curiosity," the song goes.
The video, produced by a group behind a new YouTube channel Satire, features singers portraying NASA employees singing and dancing, with the lead singer adopting the look of NASA's now-famous "Mohawk Guy," also known as engineer Boback Ferdowski, who famously donned a Mohawk with stars and stripes shaved and colored into it.
During the nearly three-minute song, even the rover appears to get into the groove.
And there's a challenge of sorts to commercial space company SpaceX, one of the companies in the running to carry U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station. SpaceX celebrated its own big success earlier this year by becoming the first private company to dock a spacecraft to the ISS.
"We're better than SpaceX and we ain't afraid to show it," the song goes.
NASA responded by tweeting out a link to the video last night.
Earlier this week, Obama, in a congratulatory phone call with the team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, joked that the agency "has come a long way from the white shirt, black dark-rimmed glasses and the pocket protectors. You guys are a little cooler than you used to be."
NASA video goes viral