Even NASA now has its own Netflix, intended as a streaming platform chock full of TV series: it’s called Nasa Plus. The US Space Agency has delved deeply into its archives which date back to the 1960s and are growing every day, and has pulled out what it deserves most to package it into thematic episodes, documentaries and informative pills. All available from November 8th both via computer and in
It is the attempt, too early to say if fully successful, to give shape to the endless heritage of imagesknow-how and people, scattered in analog and digital databases and display cases.
In a historical moment in which video entertainment is expressed in the form of TV series, almost everything becomes a TV series. Even infotainment. Why This is what NASA has always done, with its dissemination initiatives to reach the public and, according to a cultural custom very dear to Americans, make known how taxpayers’ money is spent. We are talking, within Nasa Plus, mainly about vertical series, each episode is somehow self-contained, without a plot that unfolds from one to the next. Mini documentaries, an aspect that does not take anything away from the rich woman HD experience and, In certain cases (like this) even in 4K.
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For families and schools
Imagine having a teacher explaining Newton’s laws, the surface tension of water or orbits, with a video shot in microgravity, i.e. floating without weight. Astronauts on the International Space Station do this continuously and, for some time now, also on social media. The Stemonstrations section of Nasa Plus contains around twenty short videos shot in the place where it is possible to show and understand the real consequences of some mathematical formulas with practical experiments using objects and people that are launched here and there to the ISS.
The hilarious one Bill Nyea great science communicator, has the here address book Why with NyeWhile Mars in a minute collects animated science pills on the Red Planet and the protagonists of the cartoons Nasa’s travelers they accompany the little ones to discover black holes and gamma-ray bursts, other characters get lost in adventures held hostage by a changing climate. Divided by series or topic (Kids, in this case), the mine of content is deep.
Memorabilia
Although NASA is not just Space, that is the core business anyway. And therefore the best of Nasa Plus concerns precisely the epic of man and his robots in the exploration of the unknown. Moon 101 is the series that collects interviews with scientists and engineers of the Apollo era, their story of the only missions that led man to walk on the Moon, the landing, the jumps on the surface, science, together with that of engineers and experts describing problems and solutions in humanity’s greatest adventure far from the cradle in which it was born. There is the documentary in which Neil Armstrong, first man on the Moon, celebrates 50 years of NASA, in 2008, and the one on Apollo 13 (the one about “Houston, we had a problem”).
Again: the episodes of JPL and The Space Age they tell some of the most glorious missions of exploration of the solar system, from the Voyagers (which took off almost half a century ago and are still on) to Galileo who visited Jupiter, the first landings on Mars up to the more recent Spirit and Opportunity. Waiting for new chapters that tell stories the adventures of Curiosity and Perseverance.
In 1992, the Mars Observer probe was lost a few days after landing on Mars: this story is told in Leaders in lidarone of the rare non-vertical series, with the story of how a team of stubborn engineers and scientists built and flew the laser instrument to measure the relief of Mars and make very high definition maps of the ground.
New heroes
The heroes of the past, human and robotic, have passed the baton to those of the present. The astronauts of the Artemis program, the generation ready to walk on the Moon again with what could become the next human being to set foot on it by going down the ladder first: the African American Jessica Watkins, of the Artemis Generation. There are over 30 videos dedicated to the greatest technological prodigy of the last 3 decades: il James Webb Space Telescope. From the design to the details of the refined technologies on board, to explore the deep cosmos with its lens.
Speaking of great images: to report Space outchillout lounge video in high definition of the surface of the Moon, solar psychedelia, the most monumental Hubble images, Martian panoramas and visions of planets, with relaxing music in the background; don’t miss miss Even the strokes of light between the rings of Saturngift from the Cassini probe.
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The use: we can do better
Many interviews (sometimes too many) in episodes in which there is a lack of a script that is more in step with the times (the times of TV series, in fact), but an archive that is continuously updated with new videos (there is also a Live section with upcoming events). The contents are divided not only vertically by series, but also horizontally by topic. Humanity in Space, which collects the testimony of astronauts, the climate, the Solar System and the worlds outside of here, technologies. Interesting History section, which includes dozens of videos shot during the Apollo and Shuttle programmes, with focus and highlights on the individual missions. But in which the adrenaline-filled challenge of the epics stands out on the cover X-15, experimental aircraft capable of reaching beyond the limits of the atmosphere (among the few to fly them was also Neil Armstrong, who officially became an astronaut on board one of these).
NASA Plus is obviously designed for a primarily American audience (i taxpayer above), so it is all in English and, partly, in Spanish. There are subtitles (always in English), a good excuse to improve your knowledge of the language. There is still something to improve on usability too. From the smartphone application, watching videos is inexplicably difficult (sometimes they don’t work at all), while with link to the web page everything works wonderfully both from mobile and computer. The button to transmit videos to the TV appears from the browser (both Safari and Chrome on smartphones) but not from the computer. However, Chrome gives you the possibility to project it from the menu with the right button.