As part of its 50th anniversary celebration, NASA plans to broadcast two hours’ worth of highlights of its colorful history in HD, starting on Friday night (directly opposite, as it turns out, coverage of the opening of the summer Olympics over on NBC).
The NASA Television feed will focus on many of the triumphs, and some of the setbacks, of the U.S. space program, which began in 1958 shortly after the Soviet Union announced to the world that it had sent its Sputnik satellite into orbit.
Besides this Friday (Aug. 8), the HD highlights will continue next Monday, Aug. 11, and Tuesday, Aug. 12 (9-11 a.m. EDT) on a special feed from NASA TV, which will only be available in HD to some viewers with the proper hardware and software (see below).
The highlights also will be fed in SD on NASA TV’s “media channel,” which is available on its Web site, along with an online archive of HD videos. (Some of the archival HD material, which originally aired on The Discovery Channel, has been upconverted to HD.)
For technical information on how to receive the special broadcast in HD, see the NASA Web site.
