Buzz Aldrin sings Holst Planets Suite

Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin joined the Boston Pops at Boston's Symphony Hall on Thursday for a performance of four movements from Gustav Holst's The Planets to provide a helpful reminder.

Aldrin, who walked on the moon nearly 40 years ago, is a strong advocate of space exploration. Before the performance, he told reporters that we should "dream bigger than Apollo" and "have humans occupy other planets in the solar system".

Such a vision would have been unheard of more than 90 years ago, when the British-born Holst composed his seven-planet suite amid the chaos of the First World War.

In the absence of clear pictures of the planets, Holst's compositions drew heavily on their astrological significance – which made for an interesting contrast with contemporary scientific knowledge. Aldrin read eloquent and factual introductions to the four selected movements – Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, and Venus – underscoring how much science has trumped imagination in our vision of the solar system.