Circling 240 miles (384 kilometers) above Earth, International Space Station (ISS) flight engineer Carl Walz treated a group of educators to the first-ever Elvis impression from outer space. Coming amid a space-to-ground question-and-answer session with teachers attending an ISS Educators Conference near Johnson Space Center in Houston, Walz belted out a his own rendition of "Heartbreak Hotel:"
"Well since I left my baby;
"I found a new place to dwell.
"It's 400 kilometers in the air.
"It's called space station Alpha.
"But baby it's lonely.
"Oh it's so lonely.
"But I'll be back in May.
"Ohhhhhhh, yeah."
Cheesy as it seemed, the mob at the conference went pancake, whooping and hollering and clapping as Walz' two crewmates, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Onufrienko and fellow NASA astronaut Daniel Bursch, chuckled up on the station. In fact, his penchant for Presley earned him both the nickname "Elvis" and an on-and-off gig as lead singer of the all-astronaut band "Max Q".