From aespa to Stray Kids to BTS: Is NASA Obsessed with K-pop?

On July 26th, NASA’s official social media account described the leftover debris from a supernova explosion, making direct references to popular songs or lyrics from K-pop groups, including “Chk chk boom”and “su-su-su-supernova”.

The title track of Stray Kids’ 9th mini album “ATE”is “Chk chk boom”, which was officially released on July 19th. One of the double title tracks from aespa’s first full album “Armageddon”, released on May 13th, features the lyric “Su-su-su-supernova”in the song “Supernova”.

Upon their release, both songs quickly rose to fame. The music video for “Chk chk boom”received widespread attention, thanks in part to surprise appearances by Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman. Within just one week, the video had amassed an impressive 53.83 million views.

On July 15th, it was announced that aespa’s song “Supernova”had topped both Melon and Genie’s weekly charts (July 8th~14th), setting a new record for the longest time at No.1 for a song released this year. Furthermore, the song also achieved a triple crown on the Circle Chart’s June monthly charts (Global K-pop chart, Digital chart, Streaming chart).

The mention of K-pop groups by NASA has entertained netizens. Some of the comments include, “NASA, are you also a Stay? (referring to the fandom name of Stray Kids)”, “I can’t believe NASA mentioned Stray Kids and aespa!”, “It’s amazing that even NASA is a fan of Stray Kids”, “su-su-su-supernova”and “I never thought I’d see Stray Kids and NASA together.”

On June 23rd, 2020, NASA caused a stir by mentioning BTS’s Jin. The space agency shared a photo of the moon on Twitter (now X) and captioned it, “The Moon already belongs to everybody, even Seokjin.” The post quickly gained traction and received over 300,000 retweets in just one day, demonstrating the immense influence of ARMYs around the world.