Yahoo, in a partnership with NASA, sent out 335,000 streams of the Shuttle launch in the Windows Media format, while Akamai Technologies sent the rest in RealMedia format. Photo courtesy NASA.
Fewer than 30 days after the Live 8 concerts made Internet video history, NASA’s Webcast of the space shuttle Discovery set another milestone by providing nearly 433,000 simultaneous streaming video feeds to online viewers.
That’s more than twice the 175,000 streams that America Online had at its peak on July 2 for the Live 8 concerts. It also nearly quadrupled a record for NASA set three weeks ago during Deep Impact’s encounter with the comet Tempel 1, the Associated Press reported.
Yahoo, in partnership with NASA, sent out 335,000 streams in the Windows Media format, while Akamai Technologies sent the rest in RealMedia format.
Space Shuttle Discovery lifted off at 10:39 a.m. EDT on July 26, a time when many Americans were at work and had no television access. Scott Moore, Yahoo’s vice president for content operations, acknowledged that the online audience would have been lower had the launch occurred over the weekend or at night.
Other companies also unofficially showed the launch on a Webcast. Yahoo said the audience might have exceeded 500,000 if those outlets were counted.
