Human Meets AI in Space as Cosmic Rhapsody Connects Music With NASA Science

A human and an AI travel into space looking for solutions to Earth's environmental crisis in an ambitious entertainment project combining orchestral music, animation and real astrophysics.

Cosmic Rhapsody was created by Susan Lim and Christina Teenz Tan and features music recorded at Abbey Road Studios with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and London Voices. Its fictional story follows a human and an inanimate companion on a journey into space, but the science behind their adventure has developed a fascinating real-world connection.

Indian singer and composer Joi Barua contributed music inspired by the life and death of stars, including Star Among the Cosmic Clouds and Confetti Storm. The latter developed into Confetti Star-Ion, co-composed with French composer and arranger Manu Martin.

A fictional space story met real NASA science

The unexpected connection emerged when the project's creators visited scientists at the University of California, Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory, where NASA's Compton Spectrometer and Imager mission is being developed.

They discovered that the musical story's exploding star shared a striking connection with COSI's real scientific work studying gamma rays and how elements are produced and distributed through events including supernovae. Cosmic Rhapsody remains an independent entertainment project rather than a NASA production, but that scientific overlap has brought the two worlds together.

The project already had an impressive life before that connection emerged. Its music premiered at London's Barbican in 2025, while its wider world includes songs and an animated film whose dialogue was also recorded at Abbey Road.

Now the human and AI space story is heading towards another major stage, with a US premiere scheduled for the Hollywood Bowl on July 27, 2027.