As Nasa prepares to take humans back to the moon, the agency is launching its first streaming service as a home for its live missions including Artemis.
Due later this year, the new platform will be free to watch and won’t come with annoying ad breaks. Nasa+, as it will be known, will also feature original series and a handful of new shows at launch, the space agency announced on Thursday.
Putting aside the unoriginal title - which matches the now clichéd naming convention used by other streaming services such as Disney+, Paramount+ and Apple TV+ - the platform has the ingredients to be a hit with astrophiles.
Nasa+ shows
As for what you can expect to see on Nasa+, the space agency teased topics including exoplanet research, climate change, and the influence of the Sun on our planet.
If you’re wondering what a Nasa-produced show looks like, the agency’s best-known programmes are Nasa X and the Emmy-award-winning Nasa 360. Both focus on how technologies developed by Nasa have impacted both space travel and life on Earth. These include lithium-ion batteries, sporting equipment and commercial airline safety.
Although you can already watch Nasa’s live launches on YouTube or the Nasa TV channel on internet-connected TVs, the new service should help to highlight the painstaking work that goes into each mission. Not to mention astronaut training, the dawn of consumer space travel, and Nasa’s working relationship with private partners SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin.
We’re assuming Nasa will leave genres like workplace sitcoms and revisionist dramas to the likes of Netflix (Space Force) and Apple TV (For all Mankind), and focus on non-fiction and documentaries. If it wants to add a bit of Hollywood glamour to the proceedings, it could always take us behind the scenes of the technical consulting it has provided to movies like Apollo 13, Armageddon, and Pixar’s Lightyear.
How to watch Nasa+
Upon launch, Nasa+ will be available via the NASA app on iOS and Android; streaming media players such as Roku, Apple TV, and Fire TV; and on the web.
News of the streaming service comes as Nasa prepares for the next legs of its epochal Artemis lunar mission. In September 2028, the agency plans to send the first humans to the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972, including the first woman and first person of colour.
The historic first Artemis mission, which sent an uncrewed spacecraft on a groundbreaking trip around the moon, was completed in late 2022. In late 2024, the second part of the programme is set to take humans farther than they’ve ever been in space.
Nasa is also updating its websites and app as part of an overhaul of its digital services designed to make them easier to navigate. The beta version of its site is now available here.
"Our vision is to inspire humanity through a unified, world-class Nasa web experience," said Jeff Seaton, chief information officer at the agency’s headquarters in Washington.
"Nasa’s legacy footprint presents an opportunity to dramatically improve the user experience for the public we serve. Modernizing our main websites from a technology standpoint and streamlining how the public engages with our content online are critical first steps in making our agency’s information more accessible, discoverable, and secure.”
