UPDATE - 5/27@8:20AM: Here's the official NASA mission status report from Wednesday that mentions the song (thanks berjjman).

UPDATE - 5/26@3:56PM: On a side note, Countdown was also played as the wake-up music on Flight Day 12 of the STS-109 Space Shuttle Columbia mission back in 2002 - the final successful mission of Columbia before it disintegrated on re-entry on its subsequent mission, STS-107. You can listen to an mp3 of that wake-up call at this link (thanks Chad S).

Yesterday evening around 8PM EST a one-minute, edited clip of Rush's Countdown from 1982's Signals was beamed to the Space Shuttle Endeavour as the wake-up music for the Shuttle crew, specifically at the request of Mission Specialist Mike Fincke. Here's what Mike had to say after hearing the wake-up:

Good morning to you all down in Houston and across the planet. I just wanted to say thanks for the song. That was by the band Rush and my friends Ken Fisher and Greg Shurtz sent that up for me. And Rush was really inspired by the launch of STS-1 so they included that in their music and it was really inspirational for them and for the whole album. What's really cool about it is that the Space Shuttle program has really inspired everybody across our planet for such a long time. So this song was a tribute to the Space Shuttle program and so we'd like to say good morning.

You can watch the video as was shown yesterday evening on NASA TV below or at this link (thanks Julian V). This is the final flight of the Space Shuttle Endeavour (mission STS-134) and the second to last Space Shuttle mission (STS-135 will be the last and is scheduled for July).

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