Yesterday, the Discovery astronauts were awakened by the sultry voice of an old school Star trek icon. No. it wasn’t George Takei. The captain of the 60s and lover of green women, William Shatner, greeted the crew with altered copy from his fame making TV series.

“Space, the final frontier. These have been the voyages of the Space Shuttle Discovery,” said Shatner in a specially recorded introduction to the “Theme from Star Trek,” played as wake-up music at 2:23am (0723 GMT).

“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,” said Shatner, who played Captain Kirk in the popular television and movie series

The space shuttle Discovery is set for retirement after this voyage. It makes the Space Bastard in us bittersweet.

You can hear and download the raw Air-to-Ground transmissions from the entire STS-133 mission at the NASA audio collection on Archive.org.

Drop below the cut to hear the entire wake-up playlist for STS 133.

Pointy ears should play close attention to track 5 (March 4, 2011).
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