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<\/div>\nAfter launching on Nov 8, 2023, and the sunsetting of NASA TV (NASA\u2019s linear channel) in August 2024, NASA+<\/a> has become the official destination for all NASA content, whether you are watching on Amazon Prime, Netflix or NASA\u2019s website, and app. Currently, NASA is planning to stream the first crewed launch to the Moon in over 50 years, Artemis II (estimated viewership 25M) and will become the world\u2019s largest live streaming event, the next moon landing on Artemis III (estimated viewership 250M).<\/p>\n In this Q&A, I spoke with General Manager and Head of NASA+ Rebecca Sirmons<\/a> about how her team built NASA+ and the infrastructure, gear, ops, and workflows that launch live streams at this massive scope and scale.<\/p>\n What is NASA+ and how does it differ from NASA\u2019s previous streaming efforts?<\/strong><\/p>\n NASA has been streaming for a while now. When we launched NASA+ in 2023, I like to say weaned ourselves off the linear network. Now that we\u2019ve cut the cord, I\u2019m very proud of us. We\u2019re fully streaming the universe\u2014everything from space flights to rocket launches, International Space Station, and original content.<\/p>\n Who is your audience?<\/strong><\/p>\n Our mandate in the 1958 Space Act states that we have to reach the widest possible audience, which means that no matter where you are in the world, you can watch NASA.<\/p>\n What is the Artemis program?<\/strong><\/p>\n Artemis is us going back to the moon. For Artemis I last year, we went out and tested the rocket itself. There was no crew aboard. Artemis II<\/a> is very similar to Apollo 8, where we test. We\u2019re making sure the crew is healthy, the vehicle is working properly, and that everything is working to get us ready for the moon landing, which is Artemis III.<\/a> We don\u2019t have a true launch date yet until we go through the proper procedures to make sure everything\u2019s all good.<\/p>\n How do you measure ROI and success as a government organization?<\/strong><\/p>\n 650 million people watched the moon landing on CBS in 1969 with Walter Cronkite. I doubt we will hit that exact number again. For now, we are spec\u2019ing around 250 million [for our Artemis III moon launch]. We have to think outside the box and work with industry partners. Ensuring success on the NASA side is that we will guarantee you a great feed, but we\u2019ll need help sharing it with the world.<\/p>\n Does that mean you\u2019re distributing through partners?<\/strong><\/p>\n Yes, we have partnerships with Netflix and Amazon Prime. We do YouTube, and we work with VOD partners like Kanopy.<\/p>\n Do you distribute through partners for load-balancing reasons?<\/strong><\/p>\n Exactly. You do it for load-balancing reasons. A lot of people are doing it now because we all realize that streaming is hard\u2014especially streaming from space. In the private, we\u2019re always worried about the last mile of delivery. With space, I\u2019m also worried about the first million miles.<\/p>\n Do you get feedback from viewers about the latency?<\/strong><\/p>\n No, because it\u2019s physics. We\u2019ve literally pushed it as far as it can go with latency. Latency for NASA, is speed of light, which from the moon is 1.3 seconds. Take that, ground-based jumps! Ultimately, you\u2019ll get two to three, or possibly four seconds of delay.<\/p>\n Which areas of the agency are involved in running NASA+?<\/strong><\/p>\n At NASA headquarters, we manage\u00a0NASA+ overall operations, programming, content development, and strategic partnerships\u00a0<\/p>\n All technical operations for NASA+ are handled out of Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. This includes NASA+ Engineering HUB and virtual master control.\u00a0<\/p>\n At the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, we launch live broadcasts, including the upcoming Artemis II Live Launch.<\/p>\n Johnson Space Center in Texas is the point of origin for all live streaming from space activities. This includes ISS live broadcasts (downlinks and spacewalks), and space operations live broadcasts, among them the upcoming live broadcasts for Artemis II (lunar flyby, splashdown) and the upcoming Artemis III moon landing.\u00a0<\/p>\n What does the workflow look like?<\/strong><\/p>\n Live events could be launched out of any of the centers. Primary live events come out of Kennedy Space Center (live launch broadcasts) and Johnson Space Center (live streaming from space).<\/p>\n Technical infrastructure is interconnected via all centers so that we can operate via a virtual master control room. We are cloud based, and it makes us nimble.<\/p>\n Live streaming from Space\u00a0is switched internally\u00a0and one feed is shared with the world. It\u2019s one more hop from there to Marshall, and then it goes out to our core via SRT feeds. We have our HLS that we get out to Akamai for our apps. For our internal NASA+, we have our clean feeds that we get out to CNNs and other partners.<\/p>\n After many, many years of building an infrastructure, we can continuously stream in 4K. Live streaming from ISS (in Lower Earth Orbit) is mapped out. You have to be in direction over certain satellites to bring the signal down.<\/p>\n At Marshall, we have the ultimate remote production workflow streaming team. They run our virtual master control room during a live event. For redundancy, we encoders set up across\u00a0several centers.<\/p>\n Who are your streaming leads?<\/strong><\/p>\n Megan Cruz, Live EP, NASA+\u00a0<\/p>\n Nilufar Ramji, Live EP, NASA+\u00a0<\/p>\n Jori Kates, Director NASA+\u00a0<\/p>\n Lee Erickson, Head of Streaming Tech NASA+\u00a0<\/p>\n How do teams coordinate to synchronize a live event?<\/strong><\/p>\n Our brilliant Live EP Nilufar Ramji leads the charge on the production side. We have our distribution. We do a NASA+ tech call, where our app team connects with our web team.<\/p>\n We work with Lee Erickson, head of live streaming, and his team to coordinate with the centers to pull off a live broadcast to make sure that we\u2019re all set for the workflows. For every event we build a workflow. We always have multiple redundancies. We have about three redundancies consistently for each live event.<\/p>\n What codec are you using?<\/strong><\/p>\n We use H.265\/HEVC.<\/p>\n What are you streaming?<\/strong><\/p>\n For Artemis II, we have cameras outside of the vehicle, and we have cameras inside the spacecraft, so you\u2019ll be able to see the astronauts live and we\u2019ll be able to see the moon from outside. We\u2019ll have a 24\/7 feed as well as our live broadcast. We\u2019re going to have three key broadcasts. First is the rocket launch. Then there\u2019s the lunar fly-by, where you\u2019ll see the moon which is going to be pretty exciting\u2014we\u2019ll be live streaming the moon, and it\u2019ll be the first time that we\u2019ll be experiencing this in over 50 years. The third, of course, is splashdown, when we\u2019ll bring our crew home.<\/p>\n Artemis III is the thing that I am honestly the most excited about, to provide the world one of the greatest feeds of all time, live streaming in 4K from the moon. That is a difficult task. When Artemis goes around the moon, they\u2019re going to be on the dark side of the moon. We will not have signal for a period of time, because it\u2019s just physics.<\/p>\n What makes the moon landing broadcast so challenging?<\/strong><\/p>\n We\u2019re going to try to really provide people imagery that they\u2019ve never seen before. I want people to be able to see the science and be able to see what it looks like. Back in 1969, it was a little blurry, but it was pretty incredible. For this broadcast, we\u2019re talking about deep blacks and deep whites.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no color on the moon?<\/strong><\/p>\n No, there’s no color. It’s difficult to wrap your mind around it.<\/p>\n How do you manage the camera feeds? Do astronauts point the cameras?<\/strong><\/p>\n Yes, they\u2019ll use a handheld camera. We\u2019re actually going to see what we can do to make sure that one is live streaming as well.<\/p>\n We\u2019ll also have live cameras on the helmets. We have live cameras set up on the craft itself or the lander, so there are different points of view. There\u2019s a lot of integration. And the great thing is, it\u2019s not just about sharing this imagery for the public around the world. All of these cameras serve different purposes at any different point in time. It\u2019s really fascinating. You\u2019ll be able to see some things that you\u2019ve never seen before.<\/p>\n Did you build the aspects of your workflow in-house, or are you using commercial products?<\/strong><\/p>\n For our overall workflow, it\u2019s all homegrown. Lee Erickson, our head of streaming, built it based on the tools that we already have. They built the infrastructure, the workflow, and way of doing it that\u2019s sustainable. It\u2019s cloud-based, so we can go from Kennedy Space Center to Johnson Space Center. If Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland needs to run the broadcast from their location, or if we need to run a broadcast from headquarters, we can.<\/p>\n When developing NASA+, how did you approach the build-versus-buy decision?<\/strong><\/p>\n When I first got here, I needed to see how everything was currently working in the NASA TV infrastructure. I had to figure out who was doing what, and how everything was being communicated. I put together a network operations manual that covered how we work with each other.<\/p>\n The big reveal is that we already had a streaming infrastructure. One of the main things we stopped doing was using satellite. We moved into AWS for a virtual master control room. That was a big move. It helps us now move quicker. We can turn things around on a dime. This is due to the long experience of our engineers at NASA, and the fact that they\u2019re always willing to learn and to grow.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s talk about hardware versus software. What\u2019s your approach for encoding?<\/strong><\/p>\n In the private sector, I would use software-based encoders. At NASA+, knowing what I know now about radiation testing, extreme environments, it\u2019s hardware-based encoders all the way. They don\u2019t take as much power, they can be more ruggedized, and the likelihood of them succeeding is higher.<\/p>\n Going to the moon, you are going on the most epic camping trip. You have to bring everything. You have to pack it all. You can\u2019t go back. You can\u2019t say, \u201cOh, can you fix this encoder?\u201d We have to have reliable equipment. It\u2019s risk mitigation, but also radiation.<\/p>\n How does radiation affect your equipment?<\/strong><\/p>\n If you watch one of our feeds, you\u2019ll say, \u201cWhy does it look like that? Why does that camera look like a Christmas light in the distance?\u201d That\u2019s from all the pixels being fried from radiation. We\u2019re lucky if a camera can stay over there for a couple of years.<\/p>\n We try to put all of our encoders and our cameras through radiation testing. These are all the restraints that we have to deal with. Weight is another\u2014things can\u2019t be heavy. There are many things to think about.<\/p>\n How do you optimize latency while streaming?<\/strong><\/p>\n We drastically reduced the amount of hops that we have on the ground-based side. It just goes from Johnson’s Space Center straight to Marshall. That\u2019s our hop.<\/p>\n From ISS and then Artemis, it really has to do with the most minimal feed coming down. The reduction of hops. That\u2019s the most basic way for us to minimize any sort of latency on our end.<\/p>\n With NASA+, are you taking the same video feeds that would\u2019ve been captured just for internal uses and using them externally?<\/strong><\/p>\n Everything that\u2019s pulled down for public use goes through our control. We pick the feeds, and we put it into one distributed feed to be able to tell the story in a clear way. Usually, this has to do with things like, \u201cOh, that shot is a little off. Let\u2019s go to this shot.\u201d<\/p>\n But the one thing that I\u2019m very proud of\u2014and I think it helps set NASA apart in today\u2019s environment\u2014is that we\u2019re 100% transparent. We are not manipulating imagery. It\u2019s not AI-generated. What you see is what you get.<\/p>\n Do you have a problem with people thinking the footage is AI-generated, or do they tend to trust what they\u2019re seeing?<\/strong><\/p>\n I didn\u2019t realize until I [started at NASA] that so many people did not believe in the moon landing. To me, that\u2019s what makes our job even more important. The camera\u2019s mission is to show us the reality of what’s going on.<\/p>\n Do you have live content 24\/7?<\/strong><\/p>\n No. We have a FAST channel on Amazon Prime. We do not have a 24\/7 NASA TV-type channel anymore.<\/p>\n What personas do you target with your content?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019m a little biased, and I always like to claim my bias. I have a daughter who\u2019s six years old. She\u2019s part of what I think of as the Artemis generation. It\u2019s that inner kid in us all that makes us all excited about space. I want to double down on the Artemis next generation to inspire people to be astronauts, scientists, or streaming engineers in space.<\/p>\n The other side of that, of course, is the educator, the STEM-obsessed person, people who say, \u201cHey, let’s watch this broadcast from NASA.\u201d We do have quite a few of those, which is why we work with the Kanopy.<\/p>\n Ultimately, it\u2019s the fandom, the type of person that does Reddit, does Twitch, is interested in Star Wars<\/em>\u2014the sci-fi nerds.<\/p>\n![\"nasa+](\"https:\/\/dzceab466r34n.cloudfront.net\/Images\/ArticleImages\/InlineImages\/457611-Krefetz-QA-Fig1-ORG.jpg\")
Rebecca Sirmons, General Manager, Head of NASA+, NASA\u2019s official home for streaming live and original content<\/em><\/p>\n![\"nasa+\"](\"https:\/\/dzceab466r34n.cloudfront.net\/Images\/ArticleImages\/InlineImages\/457612-Krefetz-QA-Fig2-ORG.jpg\")
NASA+ launched in 2023<\/em><\/p>\n![\"nasa](\"https:\/\/dzceab466r34n.cloudfront.net\/Images\/ArticleImages\/InlineImages\/457613-Krefetz-QA-Fig3-ORG.png\")
NASA\u2019s Artemis III moon landing mission<\/em><\/p>\n![\"nasa+](\"https:\/\/dzceab466r34n.cloudfront.net\/Images\/ArticleImages\/InlineImages\/457614-Krefetz-QA-Fig4-ORG.png\")
NASA+ on Netflix<\/em><\/p>\n\n
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![\"a](\"https:\/\/dzceab466r34n.cloudfront.net\/Images\/ArticleImages\/InlineImages\/457615-Krefetz-QA-Fig5-ORG.jpg\")
A schematic of the NASA+ streaming workflow. Image credit: Lee Erickson\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n
![\"Streaming](\"https:\/\/dzceab466r34n.cloudfront.net\/Images\/SiteImages\/457665-2026-Cover-Images-ORG.png\")
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