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Lazarus made history by becoming the first music artist to debut his original song, Pale Blue Dot, from outer space.  

Dr. Kamran Khan is a practicing physician with a second career as a songwriter and performer. He performs under the stage name Lazarus. Khan was born into a Pakistani Muslim family in Detroit. And he is an award-winning rapper and a board-certified doctor.

Pale Blue Dot in Library of Congress

His musical masterpiece “Pale Blue Dot” was launched at the International Space Station on April 7th, 2023. 

This unique song is set to be featured and preserved in the U.S. Library of Congress. 

Every year, 25 audio recordings are added to the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress. Each was chosen because of its historical, cultural, or aesthetic importance to our nation's audio heritage.

The registry contains audio recordings of all types, from music and radio broadcasts to dramatic performances and speeches. 

The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of Earth taken Feb. 14, 1990, by NASA’s Voyager 1 at a distance of 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) from the Sun.

 There were 60 images taken at that time which created the first “family portrait” of our solar system.

Astrophysicist and author Carl Sagan was committed to making science more accessible. He had a large number of speaking events, television and media projects like the “Cosmos” series, and he was a prolific author of popular science books.

His 1994 book, "Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space" was inspired by the photograph of Earth taken from so far away in space that the planet looks like a pale blue dot. 

Sagan’s book contained the classic lines "Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us."

Sagan even voiced the audiobook himself. 

Although he died in 1996, his work will live forever.  And his book’s recording has also been selected for the 2023 National Recording Registry.

Any recording added to the National Recording Registry must meet three conditions. An existing physical copy of the recording needs to be available. It has to be at least ten years old. And it must have a significant impact on American culture.

Send any nomination proposals in an email to [email protected].