Happy New Year! 2009 was a great year for NASA EDGE. With your support, we were able to produce 16 video podcasts that covered a wide range of topics. Here’s the short rundown of 2009.
• Highlighted the Desert RATS and analog field testing out at Black Point Lava Flow, AZ.
• Traveled to NASA Kennedy Space Center to cover the STS-125 launch (Last Mission to Hubble) and Ares I-X Flight Demonstration. The Ares I-X Flight Demonstration was our first live broadcast out on NASA’s Digital Learning Network.
• Visited NASA Goddard Space Flight Center to showcase LRO/LCROSS and the Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO).
• Hooked up with our Orion buddies at NASA JSC and Lockheed Martin to produce a vodcast on three Orion Simulators.
• Flew to New York City to catch up with Astronaut Mike Massimino and his Hometown Heroes tour.
• Rapped with Buzz Aldrin at NASA Headquarters for the Apollo 40th Anniversary video podcast. “All you need is the rocket experience.”
• Hung out with our friends at NASA Langley to highlight the Orion Crew Module/Launch Abort System (CM/LAS) for Ares I-X.
• Experienced the amazing shuttle tracking capability by the HYTHIRM (HYpersonic THermodynamic InfraRed Measurements) Team.
• And we can’t forget about the Superpressure Balloon team during the 2009 Mission Madness Tournament. Unbelievable!
A big kudos goes out to our fans for nominating us for the 5th Annual Podcast Awards in the ‘Best Video Podcast’ category. Even though we didn’t win, our fan base increased based on the number of downloads we received each month. From November 19 – December 18, 2009, NASA EDGE vodcasts were downloaded over 1.3 million times. This was the first time we broke 1 million downloads in a month. Thank you again!
What can you expect from NASA EDGE in 2010? We have a ton of work ahead of us but here’s an initial rundown of topics for the new year.
• Mercury Mission Control Room
• Orion Launch Abort System
• Sun-Earth Day (Live from the Philadelphia Convention Center)
• Orion Pad Abort-1 test (Live from White Sands Missile Range, NM)
• NEEMO (Analog Field Testing)
• Lunabotics Mining Competition (Live from KSC) (still pending)
• Applied Earth Science Applications
• Last Space Shuttle Launch! (Live from the press site at KSC)
• Mission Madness 2010 (still pending) – Bring it on!
and much, much more!
And finally after all the red tape has been cut, we’ll finally will be able to release the Lunar Electric Rover (LER) iPhone app. So stay tuned and keep following us on Facebook and Twitter (NASA_EDGE). If you have an idea for a vodcast then please leave us a comment or a suggestion. Who knows maybe one of our fans may appear on a NASA EDGE vodcast this year. Just don’t tell the Co-host!
Happy New Space Exploration Year!
Chris
Host