"Toys in the Attic" and "Rocks" are hailed as career-defining works for AEROSMITH that stand among rock's pivotal albums. You can now add another description to each album's legacy: "gravity-defying." CD copies of both albums were recently taken into outer space by astronaut pilot Mark E. Kelly who was on board the Space Shuttle Discovery, a 13-day, 8.5 million-kilometer trip to the International Space Station in July.

A lifelong AEROSMITH fan, "I met Steven [Tyler] at a couple of events and I mentioned to him that I could fly with a couple of CDs," says Kelly. "I asked him if he wanted me to take his favorite AEROSMITH CDs into space. This was a huge honor for me."

In addition to the "Toys in the Attic" and "Rocks" albums floating around in the spaceship, Kelly (for whom this Shuttle Discovery ride marked his second space mission) rocked selections from AEROSMITH's catalog on his MP3 player. "Everyone aboard the flight heard 'Janie's Got A Gun', which is on my iPod, and it was blasting out of the speakers. Sounded pretty cool up there." The CDs were returned to Tyler and bandmate Tom Hamilton upon Kelly's arrival back to earth.

Tyler said, "Having spent most of the '70s and part of the '80s on the dark side of the moon myself — just for inspiration, mind you — I'm not surprised that the magic in those recordings lifted them to such heights. Having risen to the top of the charts myself, being weightless and docking with the Space Station seems fitting."

Tyler flew to Florida to be on hand for blast-off, but the Shuttle couldn't leave July 1 or 2 because of the weather, launching instead on July 4, "which was neat for us but unfortunate for some of our guests who couldn’t stay," says Kelly. Tyler had to fly back to Boston to rehearse and then perform on CBS-TV's "Boston Pops", during which they performed such AEROSMITH classics as "Dream On", "Walk This Way" and "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing" with the Boston Pops orchestra.

Says Kelly: "I remember on launch day, as we were getting suited up, seeing a TV spot for Steven and Joe to perform on the Boston Pops show. That definitely put me in the mood to fly the AEROSMITH CDs up into space."