Kerblam! by Christopher

Tuesday, July 26
Fancy watching the Shuttle launch? Live?

Well, you can, just head off to NASA TV before 12:30pm UK time (GMT+1) today, and take a slot on one of the streams. You can either do RealPlayer with video, just the audio (for the slowpokes) or Windows Media Video courtesy of Yahoo (oh aren't they nice). I've been watching from about -3hrs, and I keep on hearing useful little niggles of information - for instance, I just literally heard that there's "no launch collision coefficients today", which apparently means there's no plans for having to avoid anything utilising airspace anywhere around the Shuttle's flightpath. I also learnt that this Shuttle has carried many interesting payloads, including a global communications satellite (XCOM, sounds Army-related heh) and the Hubble Space Telescope. Very cool. I also learnt that the Shuttles share names with famous boats which have discovered countries and/or places throughout history. Oh, and that it takes roughly 20 minutes for the astronauts to get from the control centre to the launchpad.

From the NASA press release detailing more specifics about the webcast:

"We're very excited to be able to offer this expanded coverage to the public," said NASA's Associate Administrator for Space Operations, William Readdy. "Internet users will be able to follow every event from launch through landing, including the spacewalks. Thanks to this agreement, they'll be able to do so at no additional cost to the taxpayers."

With a 12-day mission that includes three spacewalks, NASA expects to deliver more data to users than it has for anything but the Mars Exploration Rovers, which are still going strong after 18 months on the mysterious red planet.

and (and this is the :O bit, if that previous snippet hasn't already stirred your inner geek):

Video for both sites will be streamed through Yahoo!'s servers and the company has secured more than 50 gigabits per second of available bandwidth for the event. Additionally, the video of the Shuttle mission will be promoted throughout Yahoo!'s network, including the Yahoo! front page, the most trafficked Web page in the world.

And that's just on Yahoo's side! With the Akamai Real-format streaming, they have at least 30x more bandwidth than they've ever had before.

Nifty, huh? One of the more interesting things about the web, that NASA site. Can't beat free for useful.

Technorati tags:
NASA TV space shuttle launch

Dragged out of Christopher's memory and pasted
into his blog at 7/26/2005 12:01:00 PM. Roughly.
Blog ID: 112237566195803636· | Permalink