PREMIERES LIVE SATURDAY 15 MARCH
on NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CHANNEL
11.00AM (NSW, VIC, TAS & ACT) ¦ 10.30AM (SA)
10.00AM (QLD) ¦ 9.30AM (NT) ¦ 8.00AM (WA)
PRIMETIME ENCORE: 7.00PM AEDT
Produce a live television event from a $100 billion studio that’s 400 kilometres above the Earth’s surface and traveling at 4.9 miles per second? That’s the task at hand for National Geographic Channel with Live From Space, a 2-hour special that will literally take viewers into orbit.
Live From Space will be a spectacular, groundbreaking event broadcast live from the International Space Station (ISS) and Mission Control in Houston.
With unique access to and footage from the ISS and Mission Control, we’ll go into orbit with astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Koichi Wakata from the ISS, while astronaut Mike Massimino (most known for fixing the Hubble Telescope) will keep us grounded live from Houston.
The ISS orbits Earth every 90 minutes, meaning NGC will quite literally take viewers on a trip around the world. We’ll see incredible shots of the planet, from sunset and sunrise, to city lights and green aurora, to lightning storms and shooting stars.
Mastracchio and Wakata will give viewers a fully guided tour, showing us how they live for months in microgravity. In their own words, learn how they sleep upside down, stay fit, maintain personal hygiene and, of course, how they use the toilet.
They’ll conduct never-before-broadcast experiments that demonstrate the real-world value of the science conducted on the floating laboratory. We’ll also show how science in space is benefiting people on Earth such as the ISS’s robotic systems, which are the inspiration for a neurosurgical robot that removes brain tumors. Astronauts, flight controllers and researchers will be featured in original segments from the ISS and NASA Mission Control during the course of the two-hour live event.
It won’t just be the astronauts doing the talking, either. Viewers will be able to chat via video with Mastracchio and Wakata and have their faces beamed into space to join the conversation. A first-of-its-kind second-screen experience will also allow viewers to track the space station while exploring the interests of people under its path. This “social-media telescope” will give viewers real-time insight into the collected cares of Earth’s inhabitants.
Live from Space will coincide with Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. From executive producer Seth MacFarlane and hosted by renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tysonthe series will explore how we discovered the laws of nature and found our coordinates in space and time. It will bring to life never-before-told stories of the heroic quest for knowledge and transport viewers to new worlds and across the universe for a vision of the cosmos on the grandest scale.
