customers in the way they know best,” Sirmons says of her partners. “I was really excited that HBO Max has Dolby Vision.” Those viewers could reap the benefits of HDR video. “We had all our partners on a call,” she adds, in case anything went awry in real time. Luckily, nothing did (Houston, no problems here!). “We had no capacity issues,” which was arguably the largest concern – especially since the viewership was significantly higher than they had anticipated. “We were fine. Our partners were fine. We totally pulled it off.” Artemis II also featured the first use of the Orion Artemis II Optical Communications System (O2O), using laser-based communications instead of traditional radio to beam signals back down to Earth. The system uses invisible infrared light to send and receive data in a single transmission, making it a more efficient transfer method. During the lunar fly-by, Orion sent the first-ever 4K live stream from deep space to two ground stations in New Mexico and California – locations selected for their mild climates and clear skies, minimising signal disruption. Sirmons expects Artemis IV, the moon landing scheduled for 2028, to hit 250 million viewers – at least. “I want to grow our capacity,” she says. “I want to work with more partners. The more partnerships, the more platforms, the better. I want the audience to have the freedom to be like: ‘This is where I prefer to watch things.’ Boom, NASA is there.” NASA, according to Sirmons, is known for its contingency planning: “We’re dealing with human life.” On the streaming side, it’s not so serious – but “our infrastructure has so many redundancies built in. We’re making sure that we can go live in less than 20 minutes. Our team works fast – we have protocol set up. For example,” she continues, “if our hub at the Marshall Space Flight Center went down, we can hop to different places. We’re set up already to deal with that. We’re still a fairly new platform, but because we’re NASA, we have to be ready.” Making history In 1972, culture was culture; it was shared, objectively, by everybody. Cut to 50-plus years later, and our interests are increasingly algorithmic, our culture increasingly niche. But NASA still connects us. “There aren’t any cultural moments any more – not really,” argues Sirmons, who claims the last one was the Ellen Oscars selfie. “This was an actual pop culture moment. It brought people from all different places, countries, together. And the fact that it was organic…” she trails off. To finish the thought, it is impressive, to say the least. Space exploration has the ability to restore widespread curiosity, international cooperation and faith in humanity, which occasionally falters. “Space, period, is a team sport,” Sirmons states. “Space flight is a team sport and streaming is also a team sport. The two align fairly well. Our partners,” she adds, “we treat them as colleagues. I work with them on an ongoing basis to ensure success. It’s my job to communicate and make sure that these platforms know that big things are coming.” We don’t know what’s in store, exactly, besides subject- to-change dates for the next two Artemis missions. On
ON A HIGH NASA+ is aware of space exploration’s unique ability to connect people through shared cultural moments
» There aren’t any cultural moments any more – not really. But this was an actual pop culture moment that brought people together «
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