NASA TV

Mondo Times editors    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 5:19pm on Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

NASA Television has been honored with a Primetime Emmy Award by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. The 2009 Philo T. Farnsworth Award recognizes the agency for engineering excellence and commemorates the 40th anniversary of the technological innovations that made possible the first live TV broadcast from the moon by the Apollo 11 crew on July 20, 1969.

The Emmy Award, named after the man credited with designing and building the world's first working television system, honors an agency, company or institution with contributions over a long period of time that have significantly affected the state of television technology and engineering.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said "From the first landing of man on the moon in 1969 to today's high definition broadcasts of America's ongoing space exploration initiatives, television has been a powerful communications tool that enables the agency to share its achievements in exploration and discovery with the world."

In 1927, Farnsworth was the first inventor to transmit a television image comprised of 60 horizontal lines. He developed the dissector tube, the foundation of the modern electronic televisions.

In a 1996 interview, his wife Elma, whose nickname was Pem, said the two of them watched with pride the televised Apollo 11 moonwalk. "We were watching it and when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon Phil turned to me and said, 'Pem, this has made it all worthwhile.' Before then, he wasn't too sure."

Mondo Times editors    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 1:52pm on Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

Three members of the International Space Station crew will board a Soyuz spacecraft attached to the station and move it to a different docking port on Thursday, July 2, 2009. The journey will be broadcast live on NASA Television.

Expedition 20 Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineers Mike Barratt of NASA and Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency will undock the Soyuz TMA-14 return spacecraft, from the Zvezda service module and fly a short distance to the Pirs docking compartment. The flight is expected to take about 30 minutes.

NASA TV coverage will begin at 4 p.m. CDT with undocking planned for 4:26 p.m.

While Padalka, Barratt and Wakata are aboard the Soyuz, Expedition 20 Flight Engineers Roman Romanenko of Russia, Bob Thirsk of the Canadian Space Agency and Frank De Winne of the European Space Agency will monitor the move from inside the station. Their Soyuz return craft, the TMA-15, is docked to the Earth-facing port of the station's Zarya module.

The relocation of Soyuz TMA-14 opens the Zvezda docking port for the arrival of a new Russian Progress cargo vehicle in late July.

Mondo Times editors    Boulder Colorado USA

Posted at 2:10pm on Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

The NASA TV show "NASA 360" has won an Emmy, one of the best-known awards in regional television. This is the fifth honor in recent months for the half-hour television program that explores NASA's contributions to everyday life. NASA announced the win on June 10, 2009.

"We're thrilled NASA 360 has won recognition within the video communications industry," said Michael Finneran, NASA 360 executive producer at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. "Its visual content and fast-paced feel are designed to appeal to a wide variety of audiences."

NASA developed the program in partnership with the National Institute of Aerospace, or NIA, also in Hampton. It is written, produced and edited by Mike Bibbo and Kevin Krigsvold of NIA.