The Scoop

Rykka on Their Way to Mars?

You may know them from coming (arguably undeservedly) last in 2016’s semi final two with “The Last of Our Kind”, but Swiss singer Rykka has a new title to add to their resume: astronaut. Looks like Sam Ryder isn’t the only one up in space (, man).

It was announced back in January 2021 that Rykka has been training for 4 years to be part of a special mission by a company called “Olympus Mons”. They decided to train a group of 4 artists (including Rykka) to go to Mars and colonize it. This was followed by a Facebook post by Rykka, announcing the massive undertaking. The take-off date was set for May 25th, 2022 (4 days ago, as of writing this article).

Now, you might think this sounds strange, and it should be pretty big news, and you’re right. It most certainly does sound weird. The launch date has passed, so what happened? Is a Eurovision artist floating up in space and no one’s talking about it? A quick look at their instagram page seems to confirm that. Their bio clearly says “Musician going to Mars with @om_on_mars” and links to the launch video. And even a video shot from the atmosphere, showing our beautiful planet Earth. Very little of this makes any sense, does it?

So did it actually happen?

So let’s take a look at that launch video (it’s quite long, I’ll give you the highlights below):

Our host is far from your stereotypical scientist/engineer and talks us through some of the information about the journey, and asking questions like “what would your #LastMealOnEarth be?”.

Rykka wearing their “insane tech fabric” space suit

The (very visibly rendered video of the) “Orca” spacecraft will take our artists on a 54.6m kilometer journey to Mars. Well, at least the distance checks out, as it is how far away Mars is from Earth at it’s nearest point. That’s what google says at least, I’m no scientist.

The clothes our brave astronauts will be wearing feature, quote, “insane tech fabric”. And unlike the other space suits “on the market”, they’re apparently quite comfortable. Far out.
There’s a Q&A portion with the CEO of Olympus Mons, Jasinna Maridern (who not even Google can trace). We find out that there is gravity on the ship, cause it uses diamagnetism. The writer of this article can’t really go through the effort of checking if that’s true. Oh, and yes, there is internet in space (except in some regions of it).

Conclusion

I’ve already spent too much time on this story, but clearly someone spent much more time preparing all of this, and a few questions remain: Why? For what? What’s the purpose?

Well, Rykka did release a single called “Dreams/Death” alongside their announcement as one of the “astronauts”. And I guess here I am writing about it, so I guess that’s press coverage. It’s all a very strange art project that maybe we’re not meant to understand, but it’s clear a lot of effort has been put into this, so kudos to Rykka and their friends for creating this.

https://open.spotify.com/album/4rFCYk3TL5bw5wKgmRFu0k?si=AJmCuBYLQsCsn8B6DbU0IQ

What do you think, what’s the purpose of this magnificient journey? Leave a comment and be sure to stay updated by following @ESCXTRA on Twitter@escxtra on Instagram and liking our Facebook page for the latest updates (we promise, they’re usually real)! Also, make sure you follow us on Spotify for the latest music from your favourite Eurovision acts.

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