As it turns out, outer space and music have a lot in common. “We think that a lot of people love space because it inspires us to think differently about our world, and to think about how we can accomplish those impossible tasks,” says Katie Moyer, the program manager for new strategies at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Music can inspire us too, she says, and Moyer felt like the world could use a bit of that inspiration right now.

After the museum closed in March and cancelled its in-person events due to coronavirus concerns, she and her colleague, Nick Partridge, began planning a concert to showcase that unlikely connection. This Thursday, the museum will stage Space Songs: Through the Distance, a virtual concert premiering on YouTube, featuring space-themed performances from musicians coming to viewers from their homes.

“There’s so many great songs about space,” says Moyer. “This felt like the perfect opportunity to bring together music and space flight, which are both kind of extraordinary expressions of humanity.”

Planned over the past six weeks, the show, which is being recorded ahead of time, will be hosted by special effects designer and former MythBusters co-host Adam Savage. The musical lineup includes rocker Sting, Best Coast vocalist Bethany Cosentino, Death Cab For Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard, rocker Grace Potter, folk-blues singer Valerie June, Baltimore-based electronic musician Dan Deacon, hip-hop group Clipping (which includes Hamilton star Daveed Diggs), and others. The concert is free to watch.

Moyer and Partridge chose the artists in part for their repertoires: They will all perform original songs about space or isolation, two of the themes the show will explore. Moyer and Partridge declined to name any songs in the show, but said all except one had been previously released.

In between sets, which the artists recorded on their own camera equipment at home, the show will feature other segments, like a conversation with a NASA engineer, and an appearance by Battlestar Galactica star Edward James Olmos, who will read a bit of space history.

The show was produced in partnership with BYT Media and Lawrence Azerrad, a Grammy-winning graphic designer and creative director who worked on the 40th anniversary reissue of the Voyager Golden Record, a collection of recorded greetings, music, and ambient noise that was sent into space in two copies on NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2 spacecrafts in 1977. Though the museum has hosted virtual programming in the past, this marks its first virtual concert of this kind.

Partridge has long hoped the museum would incorporate more music into its programming, and after this, he believes they will do so more in the future. In the meantime, Moyer hopes viewers find the interstellar aspects of the show intriguing, or that it at least lifts some spirits in a trying time.

“I hope that we demonstrate how the inspiration that comes from space can be a part of your lives in the most unexpected ways,” she says. “But at the end of the day, I just hope people enjoy it.”

Space Songs: Through The Distance takes place on the Air and Space Museum’s YouTube channel on Thursday at 8 p.m. FREE

This post has been updated with the correct title for Katie Moyer, and with the news that Sting has joined the musical lineup.