I'D REALLY MADE THE GRADE

Bowie absolutely loved it - says superstar astronaut Chris Hadfield of his extraterrestrial performance of Space Oddity.

- MARION MCMULLEN finds out more

Were you surprised at the reaction when you created the first music video made in space with your cover of David Bowie's Space Oddity in 2013?

I was shocked. Bowie was a brilliant person and such a creative soul and an original and thoughtful man.

He wrote Space Oddity just slightly before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon and he was 19, just turning 20.

It had an ethereal sense to it. It was my son’s idea ‘Hey, dad, you should record Space Oddity when you are up there, you've got a guitar’. So I did, and a few of my friends on Earth put some instrumentals underneath, and it was my guitar and voice with the other instruments.

Bowie absolutely loved it. He was so complimentary and said it was the most poignant version of the song he had heard. I just couldn’t believe it, but I think part of it was he did a Mars theme and Starman and even his last album was Blackstar and he always wanted to fly in space and life never gave him the chance.

But he got to see the song he wrote as a teenager performed in a place he always dreamed of going and hundreds of millions of people have watched the video.

What is the one question you always get asked about being an astronaut?

How do you go to the bathroom in space. People are curious and it’s a very human thing to ask. (Laughs)