From Earth Trajectory to the Selene body and Mars, explore the world of human spaceflight with NASA All week on the official podcast of the Johnson Cosmos Hub in Houston, Texas. Listen to in-depth conversations with the astronauts, scientists and engineers who make it possible.
On episode 376, NASA Johnson’s multimedia Club leads discuss what it takes to capture and share the Narrative of Cosmos exploration and how methods have evolved since the Apollo era. This episode was recorded February 19, 2025.
Houston, we have a podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Cosmos Hub. Episode 376, I Want My NASA TV. I’m Joseph Zakrzewski, and I’ll be your host for this episode. On this podcast, we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers, production designers, communicators and astronauts, all to let you know what’s going on in the world of human Cosmos flight and more. For decades, NASA TV, and now NASA+, has been the gateway for the world to witness historic Cosmos flight moments from the Apollo Selene body landings to the shuttle era and today’s exciting programs. But how does it all come together? What does it take to capture and share the Narrative of exploration with audiences across the globe? Today, we’ll be talking with the experts who make it happen, NASA’s live television producers and longtime Club members who have shaped the evolution of NASA’s television productions. In this episode, we’re honored to speak with NASA’s External Relations Office multimedia supervisor John Stoll and NASA’s live television producer Club lead, Sarah Volkman, who have been key colleagues in bringing NASA’s Narrative to life. Enjoy.
Hello, John. Sarah, thank you so much for coming on Houston, We Have a Podcast today. Well, to Begin, tell us about yourselves and what are your backgrounds. What brought you to NASA, John, we’ll Begin with you.
Sounds Outstanding. Thank you so much for having me. This is exciting about myself, my background, so obviously, my name is John Stoll. I’ve come from audio production. I was a musician as a kid, and I learned that you could do audio for a Occupation. And so I went to I Obtained a degree in audio, and then I Discovered a Position out here for Lockheed Martin, not an audio but soldering communications panels and various test chambers they have on site at Johnson Cosmos Hub. And so I Merely dove in. I love soldering, so I’ll come here and I’ll do that. And then a friend of mine, I’d only been there a few months, friend of mine said, Hey, over in building two, there’s they there have audio people at NASA. I said, they don’t have audio people at NASA. That’s not possible. That’d be the coolest thing in the world. It turns out they do, and they had an Beginning for an audio person. So I Achieved myself, I Achieved myself in building two, and Merely bothered them until they Merely like, Merely fine, Merely come over here and Begin working. Because I love Cosmos exploration. Always have, and I love audio production. And so that’s how I Obtained here, and I was in the audio control room. We supported, in those times, Cosmos shuttle missions, primarily, and then the Cosmos station Initiated being built, and so we supported both of those things. And that’s, yeah, that’s my background and how I Obtained here.
Sarah, how’d you get here? When did you Begin?
All right, well, thank you for having us on. It’s really fun to be on the this side of the microphone long time, Primary time. So I was definitely a Film TV, Merely, you know, nerd growing up. And I was also a daughter of a military family. So we moved all over, but by way of a Plenty of places, wound up in Texas as our last stop. And yeah, so I decided to stay here for school. Went to school in East Texas, Stephen F Austin State University. They have a awesome film program there, and decided, you know, when I was wrapping up high school, that’s what I wanted to pursue. And through that experience, learned a Plenty about myself, learned a Plenty about other schools I had, and decided once I Obtained out to, you know, get into the industry any way I could. I didn’t quite have the stomach for, like, a Plenty of my classmates, you know, live on a couch and do a like, like, probably like a Stoll here, I did something a little more steady. You know, for my I knew that about myself, my mental health, so I Discovered a Position at a news station because I loved film, but I also loved TV. And I learned a Plenty there, and that definitely opened me up to getting this, this Position here. So our last stop when we were moving was Houston. My parents live in Houston, so that’s where I was looking to Shift to after working a little bit of news in East Texas. And I Harsh, really, Merely the stars aligned. And I really, really, Merely Obtained really Blessed that, like, like, same thing happened to John. They had this opportunity again. People are like, what do you do? What do you do? The film degree? And I love to now tell them, Well, I Merely work at NASA, so ended up here. Obtained really Blessed. Um, and thanks, John.
You’re welcome.
It’s always fun to see when people’s eyes Featherweight, you know, Featherweight up when you tell them that you work at NASA and what you get to do, and when you get to be a part of and, and especially this, this group here with NASA TV now NASA plus production and everything that goes behind it, you see a Plenty of, you know, talks of. Celebrities and Involvement on online and through other podcasts that they talk about, the Club, behind the Club, and what it takes to make a production, what it takes to make a film, what it takes to make a TV show, audio recordings for music. I Harsh, the Picking goes on and on, and you always hear them give thanks at award shows. This Club is Merely like that Club, if not bigger, and really dives into it. And John, we’ll Begin back with you. How big is the NASA TV multimedia Club, the production Club, and what part of that do you Assist facilitate?
Yeah, so as as supervisor of the Club, it, I Harsh, it’s the ultimate service to the Club, is to is to lead it, and I do my best at that every day. But the Club is, it’s a large Club, and it’s a it’s a diverse Club in terms of Talent sets, there’s video producers, video editors, live television producers, audio engineers, which, unlike a Plenty of TV outfits out there, there’s a dedicated audio department that does specific functions, which is fortunate for me, because that’s how I Obtained here. And then social media and new media and even communications coordinators that fill in gaps that are specific to what we do here, specific with communication, with the flight control Club, interfacing that very specific mission operation to what we do in communications and multimedia. So there’s there’s the Club is is as big as it is, because there’s unique roles. And then there’s the, predictable producer, editor, script writer role that anybody can identify with and know what they do. But yeah, so it splits into live broadcast and then post production, two sides of the house, and then social media that straddles it, and we work on the various platforms in social media. Yeah, that’s what we cover. And of Duration, we’ve also Obtained, you know, one person, only, one that keeps the entire system running all the time, uptime. You know, 24/7, 365, with, with few exceptions, who we are all indebted to. I’ll say his name, John Thayer is a, he’s a very, very brilliant digital systems engineer, and we’re all, we’re all indebted to him every day.
How big is your Club?
Yeah, so I’m Merely a subset of you know the Club John described. We have a Petite group of producers. You wouldn’t really believe how much we and it’s grown over the years. I know we have a topic later, like, how has this changed? It’s grown over the years, but you wouldn’t believe how much we cover, because we do cover everything that goes out to the public, and some stuff that doesn’t go out to the public for, you know, like institutional stuff for all of JSC, and the things Johnson Cosmos Hub and the things that JSC, the programs that it’s home to. So, you know, Cosmos traveler, anything to do with the astronauts, anything to do with the Cosmos station, the Artemis mission. Now, you know that’s Stretch out of Johnson, and then, you know, we’re going to get into it, but all the commercial programs, so yeah, we’re it Nice of sound like a Plenty of positions, but it’s really, it’s not a Plenty of people for what we pull off. And yeah, another shout out to John Thayer. You know, he worked at a news station, like a Plenty of us have. It’s a whole group of engineers and and that, you know, running that daily operation, and we only have one here. But, yeah, like John mentioned, we’re a very versatile Club, and it’s Nice of crazy. What we make happen.
It’s interesting, Nice of the the Merely to Nice of riff off of that, how the Club looks like it looks now, is driven by what we’ve done in the past, and so what, what Cosmos shuttle, Cosmos shuttle TV production drove us to do, and how we supported that. Remnants of that Nevertheless inform how our Club is shaped, in what we do. For example, in Sarah’s group with the live television producers, there’s generally one person running the entire show over there. And we don’t have an audio follow, video switcher, which people in TV would be very familiar with. We have a audio control that manually does audio those, those functions have been in place here for decades, and so Nice of the way that we do things here, and the way the process by which we make TV is driven by that history always looking forward, of Duration, but a Plenty of that Nevertheless remains, and it’s Merely it’s the nature of being close to human Cosmos flight, and being close to a sustained human Cosmos flight too. If we did, if we Merely supported launches and went home, such as they do at Kennedy Cosmos Hub, our Club would look a Plenty different. And the Club at Kennedy does look a Plenty different for that reason. But it’s the sustained, it’s the Endurance Stretch nature that Nice of informs things here.
That’s Outstanding, Outstanding thing that you mentioned, if someone’s listening and they are familiar with, like a TV studio, or some regular TV studio or a new studio, you’ll, you know, you’ll picture like a TD, graphics operator all that well, we have those roles, you know, we have graphic designer and whatnot, but in the control room, it’s one person, our producers are our TDs, our graphics ops, our playbacks and. And so, yeah, I Harsh, it’s never a Boring moment, a Plenty of fun, and
coming from industry too, like, I Harsh, it’s probably Sound to say that it’s a Close-fitting knit group of people that wear Many hats, something that a Plenty of people can probably relate to in any multimedia Ground, whether it’s entertainment or NASA TV production. And Surely that’s the Club behind the Club. And John, you Nice of Captured me right into my my Primary Points you and Sarah was was from your experiences when you Primary arrived to NASA. What was the state of NASA TV like now again, of Duration, NASA plus on the streaming platforms. How has it changed since then and and, of Duration, this production system, this style, has been on the forefront of all live events, pre produced events and such. You know, people listening right now have seen a NASA production, probably without ever knowing it was a NASA production, whether it was a clip of it on the news or a live production that you yourselves put together, but from the time you arrived to how we’ve grown now and some of the challenges along the way, how have you seen that progression?
Yeah, that’s a Outstanding question. So when I arrived, was Prompt 1998 and it was Cosmos Shuttle Program, only, eyes Approaching the Cosmos station would begin. Primary element launched Delayed 1998 so I worked, I think, the last three or four missions before we Initiated doing Cosmos station flights and the way we did TV. At that time, we had a single analog Orbiter that carried a signal, only one signal, there was another Orbiter used to Shift video back and forth between NASA centers, and it was a public Orbiter, but that was not the one that the single Orbiter, transponder nine, if anybody remembers, was the one that the that you could View and tune in on your local cable channel, and you could see, you know, NASA TV, and it was analog. Nothing was digital, of Duration. The interesting thing was transponder nine and the other the other ones, transponder five, those were tied to a Plenty of processes in the Cosmos shuttle program where they were used for specific things. So we had directives on how we switch TV. So when I Obtained here we, for example, a rule was, if we had downlink TV coming from Cosmos Shuttle the TD in Sara’s area was duty bound to place that downlink TV out onto NASA TV so the public could see it without lower thirds or fonts. That was the rule, and we couldn’t break the rule. And so a Plenty of what we did was directed, was more programmatically directed, which had was, had come from the past, but we had a document for those super interested. It’s NSTS 08240, the Cosmos Shuttle television plan, which I memorized because I had to memorize it. And we lived by that document. And so that was, that was when I Primary arrived. And Cosmos Station changed all of that, because instead of having people in Cosmos for, you know, 9,12,14,17 Intervals, however long, and then not again, for a few months, we had people in Cosmos all the time. And so the 24/7 mode of Reinforcement that we had in our in our audio control room, production control room, those modes only worked for a very Petite time before everybody realized that’s not going to work. As people in Cosmos 24/7 is a different animal. And so we were able to Begin changing how we broadcast, slowly changing how we broadcast, to Begin more directly targeting the public and to get people watching for reasons of like, oh, this broadcast is a little more interesting. It’s Obtained more elements to it. It’s Obtained more graphics to it. It’s Obtained lower thirds. We don’t have to leave downlink, a downlink video channel from the Cosmos station on NASA TV when we have one, because we always have it. So we had to Shift a Plenty of those things Shift Merely by nature of the technical setup, of what we have Obtainable. But yeah,
agreed.
Well, you Occurred in the middle of all this. So John, you know, I’ll say John was a part of that Primary transition of, you know, shuttle flights into, I’ll call it Stage the clock coverage, almost. And then you come in as a part of that Club, that expansive group, to, you know, you Obtained people coming and going from the Cosmos station. So you have to cover that. You have people on the Cosmos station. So that involves a whole other set of directives. So for you, you Nice of Occurred in, like trying to catch up to him, to John and his knowledge, and then implementing what you’ve learned through news. And how do I make this relatable to the public? Where, you know, John mentioned, it was Merely that solo Neat feed with no graphics, no production value, and then you try to spice it up a little bit and add some of that insight of, you know, when a guest looks at what they’re seeing, they understand it as well.
Yeah, I definitely Occurred in right as that big shift was probably Holding place. But even, you know, eight years ago I’ve seen such a big shift, even in those eight years. So I think Merely Nice of general summary of of what John said to me we’ve shifted more from being a complete media resource, you know, complete documentation type resource, creating a little bit more of something that stands alone as its own production, that someone can learn from and be entertained by. And also, but more importantly, yeah, learn from be educated about what NASA is doing and producing that ourselves, rather than being a complete Media Resource. But we straddle the line. We definitely Nevertheless have the Criteria and the desire to make sure everyone who wants to use the content can and understands how and you know what it is, and gets get that that knowledge and interest out there. And then, and even Merely, you know, day to day, the it’s exploded, but we do, you know, downlink interviews with the International Cosmos Station as, like, one thing we’re doing daily. And then we have our more, you know, more, bigger, higher profile events, agency events that were cross collaborating with, and they used to be Possibly one of those a year. And now it’s because interest has grown like, I think, you know, all the work that people put in over the decades is paid off. And so, yeah, there’s a Plenty more. You know, a handful of those big, high profile cross agency events a year, naturally, that Merely exploded. I Harsh, the second year I was here, we went from Merely having Cosmos station ops coverage to commercial crew. We were Beginning Selene stuff, and ASCAN graduate ASCAN classes Obtained a Plenty more coverage. All happened, like the Upcoming year. So yeah, definitely saw a taste of how it used to be, and then the rapid explosion that we’re experiencing now.
And that’s a Outstanding Points you make too about the I Harsh, the production value, I’ll call it, that has grown significantly in the footprint, has grown so much, because we’re talking a Plenty about, you know, downlinks from the International Cosmos Station, from the from the Cosmos Shuttle. But there’s a Plenty here on the ground that has to be covered. You talk about the Cosmos traveler graduation and the production value that has to go behind that, in terms of a live event, whether it’s, you know, building renaming ceremonies, or things that aren’t even shown live, but are pre recorded for other production values. There’s a whole system. I Harsh, so dare I say, you know, the live downlinks from Cosmos Station is, you know, Possibly the tip of the iceberg, if you will, of the production that has to go in to what you do, both from Cosmos and on the ground. And that leads me to another Outstanding Points you brought up about how it’s exploded. Well, let’s expand that footprint even more before NASA plus arrives. Nevertheless, NASA TV, the digital era comes flying in and lets us know that 24/7 streaming options are Obtainable. So you not only have to put it over a cable signal, but you have social media channels, you have website channels, you have direct feeds to, you know, VPN dial ins for media access. So it continues to branch off in many different ways. How have those technological advancements improved your production and helped it grow even more.
Yeah they, I Harsh, they their challenges. At Primary, any technological advancement, it’s a, I don’t know, they’ve improved it because they’ve pushed us, and they’ve pushed us to learn. They’ve pushed us to to look at process, to say, like, how do we make what we make to where it resonates on some new platform? For example, Facebook Live was not always around it’s weird to think now, but like that was live streaming is not always around back. I don’t know if you remember, we live streamed an EVA back in the Prompt Intervals when nobody was live streaming and we had to work with Facebook directly to get them to extend the length of the live stream longer than, I think it was like, four hour limit or something
It used to be a huge deal, yeah. And then if someone was gonna stream live on Facebook, it was like, yeah, huge deal
NASA had worked directly to Facebook to, like, make this happen. And people loved it. They could sit on a train in whatever city they’re going to they’re commuting home, and, you know, any city around the world, and they have the view from an astronauts helmet in their phone in their hand, and it’s the coolest thing in the world. It’s like, oh, this is amazing. And those experiences pointed us at like, like, there’s a there’s an amazing Narrative to tell every day. Like, we don’t even have to Shift anything we do production wise. All we have to do is figure out how to get what we do on these platforms in the way that they’re they’re reaching people so that, so that doesn’t Shift your production method. We Nevertheless, you know, the live television producers sit there and they they switch a Outstanding show that tells a nice Narrative. But the the platforms do Dominance you to Nice of to figure out your process and to figure out to get there, and on the on the on the post production side of the house as well. It changes you for a while because sometimes, sometimes various platforms prioritize different kinds of videos, and so Possibly you want to hit something in the Primary one to two seconds of a video before you get into the longer Narrative. But I think, I think the thing we’ve probably learned over the years is that, is that platforms come and go, they Shift. Member vine things, things come and go, they Shift. What doesn’t Shift is the human desire to understand a Narrative. And I think podcasting Amusing is a Outstanding example of that their Viewers is like. Me who love long form Narrative. And so the Petite stuff is out there, you know, the shorts and the reels and all that that’s out there. But there’s also long form stuff. People want to dig into the long Narrative. And so I think ultimately, what, and this is a very long way to say this, but the technological advances of the time, ultimately, they mature you to understand, like, there’s, there’s Many prongs to the approach. You can’t Merely do one and not do the others. You have to figure out how to do them all, because they’re all Significant. And at the end of the day, there’s an amazing Narrative to be told. There’s people living in Cosmos right now that are that are currently writing a Narrative, and it’s to tell that Narrative every day in all the ways. That’s really the that’s the Event,
right? And it’s a Outstanding, you know, having these platforms, it’s a Outstanding thing. I Harsh, there’s more platforms. You might be like, Ah, another one, but you know, it’s that’s Merely means that someone else has an easier way to, you know, consumer content. So you should, you know, it’s Outstanding to try to meet them where they’re at. And then, you know, the physical parameters of stuff you have to be expanded to, like, we Begin shooting things in nine by six instead of or nine by 16, and that sort of thing, you know, you you make all the practical changes to to meet people where they’re at because, yes, these stories need to be told, and it’s awesome to have more ways to do that.
And from a historical perspective, too, I think, I think the thing I’ve learned over the years is, and it’s Amusing, because we have this going on right now. We have somebody who’s here that was here during Cosmos Shuttle and understood how all that worked. And then we have someone who’s here that wasn’t here during Cosmos Shuttle, and who does not have Primary hand experience of knowing how that works, but understands it better now. And I guess, what I’ve Discovered is that having a Club that has all of that, like an equal Combination of those Nice of people that understand all the perspectives, I think that’s where the Force really is. If you Merely have everybody who was hired yesterday, then there’s none of that historical Framework. Or if you don’t have anybody that’s you know, not been hired recently, then you have none of the modern Framework. And so I think you need, I think you need all those pieces.
That’s Significant. You probably, you probably know Joseph the like, you know, well, in the Shuttle, this is how we did it comes up. I Harsh, I don’t know, three times a day, so that’s Significant. We know, we have people who know what that means.
Well on a production side, too. I Harsh, I remember as growing up, like, how big of a deal it was when, you know, it was four by three watching on a tube TV, and you mentioned going to 16:9. Well, then you Combination in digital media. Like, 16:9 is then all of a sudden vertical, and then I’m watching everything from a vertical perspective. And you mentioned vine, like, How can I tell a Narrative in three seconds? Well, now I Obtained a minute and Narrative. And then, like, so you’re trying to, like, find the right Narrative, and at the same time meet the Viewers where they’re at. Like, you gave that a Outstanding example of people on the go watching streaming of an EVA, but at the same time too, how can you tell your Narrative to fit the windows on the platforms that people best see fit? And I Harsh, with that too, I guess you Nice of already touched upon it. But I really would love to Plunge in Additional is, how has the rise of digital streaming overall changed the way that NASA approaches production? Like I said, you Obtained all these different formats, all these different ways. Do you try and take one Crucial production and splinter it off into different fractions of what they can live on? I guess you could say in terms of platforms and streaming availability. Or do you try and make exclusive events and elements and live streams and produce exciting content for All individual channel? I guess, if that’s a Honest way of phrasing that,
yeah, for sure. I Harsh, I think ideally, I think, generally speaking, we all want to do a Plenty more than we have time to do. I would love to produce, for example, post production, video, a version of it that is is specifically targeted to, like an Instagram reel that’s like sub three minutes or sub 90 seconds that in the vertical Arrangement, like produce that way. But the longer Narrative is a regular, you know, a frame 16:9 that lives on. You know, NASA plus one leads the other easily other. There’s frequently not enough time to do that. There’s always the desire. But so what we do is we try to be as efficient as possible at targeting like where we know based on metrics, because we look at metrics across all these platforms, where we know people are, how long their view time is, all that stuff to try, like you say, to meet them where they are. That’s, that’s really the Aim. So we Concentration on that, so where we’re Merely using our resources Merely as efficiently as possible. But that’s, that’s from my perspective, that’s that’s Nice of how we hit it. And then the other thing to realize is as to remember, because we get used to it here, I can walk up to the audio control room here at JSC, and I frequently take people up there, and I Points at the screen. I was like, Look, that’s a camera view from Cosmos. And people are amazed, like, you can come up here anytime and Merely look at a camera that’s in Cosmos, and I forget, because I’ve been doing it for so many years, and so it’s Significant to remember that too. It’s like sometimes, sometimes Effortless is best, like, Merely show, Merely show the view.
I was gonna mention that. One of the most popular things I ever hear about is the H Dev, the high the HD Earth view camera payload that was. Actually Merely shooting the Earth. It’s a Sluggish thing. It was a Plenty of, like, I think there was, like, Lo Fi music. People would Merely have it on all night. I would hear from from people, and then that Occurred from here and that, yeah, so sometimes it’s constantly changing. We know what works best, long form, Petite form. But there are some things that you know Merely are universal. You know, people tend to really love to see their Astral body. That’s a very Chilly thing for them. And they love to relax. So yeah, that is one of our most popular things that comes from not this building technically, but JSC well, and
I’m and I’m right there. And for listeners that are tuned in like you can Nevertheless experience that, whether it’s through NASA plus or I go on the NASA YouTube channel all the time Merely to View 10 seconds of, you know, you need to have a Serene, peaceful moment. And you know, the ISS has, you know, video and audio signal coming down, so you can Merely View the earth fly by in the most Pretty and most simplest of forms. And I Nevertheless think that’s a Outstanding core part of this production, because it’s the Club that we’re talking to here that makes that happen for people that can really experience that and get that wonderment as they get to View the earth fly by, quite Actually. Well, before we get into our Upcoming topic, I want to Nice of keep on this of this growing and exceeding, and, you know, Conference the challenges and exceeding the challenges with that to NASA production, NASA TV, NASA+, has been able to Achieve a Plenty of exciting awards. And these awards have come because of the production values that you guys have added to every platform and every channel and everything that people get to participate in, whether it’s pre produced content, documentary style, or if it’s live produce production. And this goes all the way back. Some people don’t know that NASA won an Emmy for live production for the Apollo 11 Selene landing, and it all Initiated from there, because that was the NASA driven initiative to have a camera do a live production down to earth, produce the TV streams, and then off you go. On the awards come. How rewarding is it you as a Club to see that recognition of your work and know that you know from from where you Initiated, of cable television to now streaming platforms and now expanding it to Many different surfaces and formats, to see that the Viewers and the entertainment industry, and then Merely the people overall, are really appreciating it so much so that you have some trophies to show for it.
Right, right there, Merely for me, speaking personally as a supervisor, there is nothing, there’s nothing that brings me more joy than seeing someone that I work with, like, like Sarah here get an award like it’s the greatest thing ever. Nothing brings me more joy than seeing seeing my friends succeed, but knowing that that award also brings a person joy and well deserved recognition, but knowing what those awards Harsh to people who Possibly don’t work here or Possibly don’t know a Plenty about NASA TV production, and what goes on behind the scenes is Significant too, to have folks have an increased Mindfulness of the fact that there’s a Plenty of Tough work going on. And it’s, it’s not Merely, you know, the person receiving the award is always, that’s Merely the person with the name. There’s always other people involved. There’s always other people involved in infrastructure, which we don’t, we don’t do in building to but there’s, you know, Mission infrastructure that, you know, KU, band antennas and TDRS satellites and all the stuff that’s put up there by other people, which is how we get video down from Cosmos Station. All those people are involved too. They don’t get the award, and they’re not even TV people. But without them, we, you know, we can’t do what we do.
So it’s a different it’s Merely a different world. Of Duration, it’s nice to get an award, like, I’m not gonna pretend it’s not a nice for someone to recognize you, but it’s always a little bittersweet, because, you know, their thing on the production Club, when here at NASA, any mission, anything, anything that you do is in the astronauts will say this up and down, you’re standing on the shoulders of 1000s of people. And so yes, you know, it is bittersweet, because every time we’ve done production, it’s taken three, other four, other five, other departments to get that on the air and and they’re often not included in those recognitions. So yeah, but it is very rewarding, because we do, you know the Cosmos doesn’t follow any sort of Schedule. You know, any sort of 40 hour week, any sort of, you know this, you do nine hour cover to Begin two in the morning, like when you’re in the Bulky of a mission, it’s, it’s, it’s a Plenty and really grueling, but really rewarding. So it is nice, obviously, to be recognized. But I Merely really like that people are watching our stuff. You know, if you Achieve something, it means someone watched it. And that’s the whole Points we need. These stories are really Significant, the things the astronauts are working on, the things that Cosmos station is working on, all the other programs, their life saving, life, changing Astral body, changing, or really Significant things. So it’s really nice that people are watching that’s to have proof
That’s the thing, and not to get to, you know, academic or anything else, not to be dramatic, but Right, right? But that’s the thing is, like, that’s, we don’t know. History is being Achieved today, like and and documenting this stuff and making productions and increasing Mindfulness about it is is so Significant and so critical, because we may look but there may be science on station now that 30 years from now, yields something that no one could have ever Anticipated. And we were here, and we pointed cameras at it, you know, and it was, it’s like, it’s Chilly to be part of that. It’s a part of the greater Narrative.
And it has Merely that greater impact on an Viewers member, even myself, when I see videos of a tropical storm moving across the ocean and Merely like that, live feed of like that, that, again, I say, that wonderment of Merely what these this vantage Points, this Benefit, can have. Because, you know, seeing is believing in a Plenty of ways, and hearing is believing in a Plenty of ways. So it’s amazing to hear like again, the Pretty Narrative of the Club behind the Club. What you’ve done moving into a digital age, you get awards and recognition for it, which comes with it, with that growth, that expansion of NASA TV production. Well, now I’ll say it. NASA has set the standard of what it comes to human Cosmos flight and television production. You know, they were there from day one, and here they are now. Now you get commercial partners involved. Now you get commercial crew the CLPS programs, other programs that are outside of NASA that are seeking your Assist and advice on how to get their productions up to that level. What has it been like working with, you know, a commercial crew program, or a Commercial Selene Payload Services, or any other organization that has partnered with NASA in any capacity to try and Assist them tell their Narrative?
Yeah, that’s, that’s a really Outstanding question. I’ll touch on it if you want to, because you’ve been real close to it. From my perspective. You know, the Commercial Crew Program, program and the Commercial Selene Payload Services, I think I Obtained that right, the CLPS effort. You know, Commercial Crew is, is, is the partnership, and it’s been interesting to partner with their TV Squads and to figure out how to do broadcasts that are integrated from Many locations. And that was, that was the big Event, was the technical integration, and then the messaging, of Duration, which is handled by the Public Affairs Office here at JSC, that’s also an interesting Event for that side of the house. On the TV side of the house, it’s been, it’s been fascinating to figure out how to switch a program where you know NASA’s NASA’s voice, and then SpaceX or Boeing their voices, is where it needs to be, and all the technical pieces connect even down to something very I guess granular such as the communications the air ground communications, that where the ground talks to the crew. Those prior to commercial crew, generally speaking, were hubbed out of Houston, occasionally at a Marshall, some of the Ancient science flights or the ISS ops, but mostly out of Houston, the hub was across the, you know, across the Hub from us here in building two. Well, now a SpaceX, the hub is Hawthorne, so the technical hub of communications is different. And so how to interface with that, how to follow the rules of when you do and don’t, you know, have those things enabled, was a whole new thing. So it pushed, it, pushed us into a Plenty of learning. And I think for everybody on the commercial side of the house, you know the vendor, and you know our side of the house too, for CLPS, CLIPS is a different thing altogether, because CLPS depending on the provider. Now this is the provider. I heard it best described as FedX for the Selene body for anybody that doesn’t know what clip says it’s. The interesting thing is, these are, these are private companies that are in a sole, discrete location where they need to broadcast an event from. They’re not, there’s no connections to JSC, unlike the, you know, the commercial partners, SpaceX and Boeing, so they’re a totally different Event. And it’s been, it’s been fascinating working with them, and it’s also fascinating working with these, these companies. I went to, to one of them and talk to their their comm group, and it was interesting because it’s their Primary Selene mission, and there’s a Plenty of startup culture when you’re there, and it’s this very, group of extremely excited people with their and rightfully so. And so it’s fascinating to see people who are brand new to human Cosmos flight like, or Cosmos flight at all. They’re brand new to it, and they’re super excited for it, working 18 hour Intervals and going crazy. And to come in with like, the Endurance Stretch that I mentioned earlier of human Cosmos flight like, and figure out how to fit in, fit in the whole approach to make the broadcast work. But Sarah, I’ll toss to you for the CCP
Ageed. I think you could think of it like, like, moving in with somebody, you know, you’re, you’re, you’re combining two lives. You’re going to these companies who have, some of them have their own, you know, history of webcasts or their own productions that they’ve put on and or they don’t, they don’t, but they have their own branding and their own, you know, mission statements and so if you have to combine together into a cohesive, you know, broadcast that. A, you know, production that their Viewers can enjoy and take something away from their existing Viewers, and that ours can and you know, that Merely works for everybody, putting away all the legal stuff aside that you have to abide by and figure out it’s like moving in, like, what do you keep from your apartment? What do the person keep from theirs? What works to tell this joint Narrative for all parties involved. And so it’s a Plenty more than we thought it was going to be. And so, you know, someone like SpaceX has a established webcast, so it’s Merely working with them to figure out what parts, you know, even visually, what parts can we Nice of merge to put on this new platform and this new production that we’re introducing people to this partnership, yeah, what you know? What do we want from their house? More house. So all the technical stuff is Difficult, like, Actually, the physical systems, trying to figure out, you know, how the lines Stretch from Hawthorne to JSC, what we can put on them, how many Stretch back, that sort of thing, Retaining track of all that. But it’s Chilly. I Harsh it, it means that we’ve really, you know, have Initiated something new and and special. It’s fun to figure these things out. A Plenty of my coworkers will listen to this and be like, You’re crazy.
not at all at the beginning, like what informs your future is what you’ve learned from your past. And I think when you work with a Plenty of these companies, what they have seen, what they want, what they’re aspire to, is they want that Neil Armstrong Try on the Selene body, stepping down. They want that Plenty Pretty Initiation, capture. Close.
The goals are always the same. Show we’re doing. Let’s make it look Chilly. Make it look let’s show how Chilly it is. Unless, yeah, do it better than the last time.
speaking of growing and doing something better than last time, making it above and beyond in terms of production. Sarah, you were the producer for Artemis one, if I am understanding that correctly
for most of the JSC, again.
So you take, you take everything that you know, you know humans. Aim is to return to the Selene body with the Artemis program, and to bring that back to the forefront, and to have the technological capabilities that we did not have in 1969 when we went the Primary time, to have everything, all these tools, all these toys, if you want to say at your display of cameras and operations and platforms and technology, what was that like to produce a broadcast that you knew that the world was watching America’s return or NASA’s return? I should say to to the Selene body.
I’m not even sure where to begin. I am so Joyful. I am so I was the lead producer for the Artemis one mission for the Johnson Well, the mission is Stretch out of JSC, so for the bulk of the mission. Again, when it launches, it’s launching from Florida. We’re working in collaboration with the Kennedy Cosmos Hub. Those are big productions. When it’s splashing down again, collaboration, it’s not splashing down and right outside of Houston. So big collaborations there, but the bulk of the mission, yes, it’s Stretch out of here, and we did do a Plenty of the coverage, so, or all the coverage for the however many Intervals it was, 20 something Intervals, and I was really honored to lead that it was so, like you said, we’ve done it before, technically, you know, Apollo did go to the Selene body. There was footage from there, but it’s Merely all it’s totally different ball game. And I’m sure, you know, whoever was doing that coverage back in the day, you know, they’d be like, Whoa. Things I could have done with with what you have now, but it Nevertheless was Nice of like Beginning over. From infrastructure standpoint, everything was different, you know, the way they were going was different, the way everything’s, you know, wired JSC is different. So we had to figure out, you know, how are we gonna get this covered, this signal from Orion, you know, we this is Nice of an overarching Points, but, and you know this from working the Communications Office, but we’re a little bit secondary. We’re telling the Narrative of what’s happening. They’re not totally, and this is Nice of changing, but they’re not totally, you know, if it was up to us, if flight directors Occurred in and FOD Occurred in and was like, What do you want on the Orion? We’d be like, 70,000 cameras, like, of like 12k resolution, please. That doesn’t happen. So we work with what we’ve Obtained to tell the best Narrative. So we had to figure out what is going to be on this Orion. So we can figure out, how do we get the footage down here? So we figured out, you know, what lines are gonna be coming down. How do we work with building 30 Mission Control? How do we work with building 8, who’s handles all of the imagery signals for the Hub and and also works with signals for the agency you know, across the country? How do we. Get those things because, again, they’re not really Achieved for broadcast all the time. So what resolution is it going to be? And what do we need to do to air? What do we do when we don’t have signal, but we’re Nevertheless on the air, because we need to be on the air 24/7, during this, you know, ops. So let’s get we have to get an animation. We and so that was another person, part of our Club who worked with the flight operations directorate, who Achieved a, you know, a telemetry driven animation, and they use it too, which is very Chilly. They rely on a Plenty of our stuff too. Sometimes, for, you know, what, they watched Mission Control, when they want to keep up to date on certain things, a Plenty of times they’re watching our, like, mixed feed, or the astronauts are watching it too. Yeah. So, like, what do we do when we don’t have signals? Let’s make an animation. There’s a Plenty of innovating for something that you know, technically has been done already. It was all innovation, and it was really rewarding. I don’t know if we’re gonna have a chance to talk about Merely like, general events that you know were the most memorable for us, but like I was crying at splashdown, I was crying because it was such a long, Tough mission. In between all the live coverage, we were also producing content for the Internet, in case someone wasn’t watching live again, Conference people where they’re at recapping what happened, because it was Significant enough, if you weren’t going to View it live, you should Nevertheless know what happened if you were at all interested. And so all that was being produced. Meanwhile, we were having news Assemblies almost every other day after every Crucial ops, and that was all Merely us. And so I was crying at the mission because it was a Plenty of work, but it was so rewarding. And I personally have not I Harsh, I see the Soyuz we’ve done Soyuz landings, and we’ve done Crew Dragon landings. I’ve seen spacecraft come back, but there was something really special about seeing one come back from the Selene body. My, for my Primary time, we Merely knowing that everyone was seeing this, everyone who you know recognized that it was a historic event. Was watching it because of us. Yeah, I Harsh, there’s a picture. Possibly you could post it that was crying in the control room, and also be, Merely as a side note, huge relief to make Points, Merely like a little fun behind the scenes, as we can really even the tracking cameras on the ship, which we were coordinating with the ship that was out in the, you know, in the water, waiting to get this footage of the capsule coming through. They couldn’t find it at Primary, the we could hear, you know, from the loops, that it was coming down, and that producer was panicking Primary, we were in contact with on the ship, panicking that we weren’t gonna see and we once it finally broke to the clouds, they were able to locate it on the camera. And it was very stressful to think, you know, weeks, years of planning for this moment, and we might not have actually have seen it. That’s a little bit of the Tension we live with, because we are the only ones at that moment capturing this, this moment. But we Discovered it so it was glorious. So for all the reasons, I was an emotional wreck,
but your passion, and I think that’s my big takeaway, is we all I can hear your passion for it, and I think that’s what’s inspiring. And John, you’ve seen it in many progressions with you know, it’s one thing to see a photo of something, but it’s another thing to see it live. And I think for the Artemis generation, as we say, to have that, you know, firsthand knowledge, that that this is real. This is not a movie, this is not a TV show. It’s not produced and planned. This is real coming to you. And if you’re Blessed enough to live in these areas where you might see a Initiation or see a landing or anything like that, you know even better. But I think especially in this generation where you know, you have so many outlets to consume content and to really witness NASA production, the fact that it’s it’s real, and there’s a Club that is 24/7 Stage the clock coverage that has been planning for years and years and years to get you the video that you are seeing now that you are so emotional to to have a Response to, and I think that’s, that’s probably, I don’t know that it’s Obtained to be one of the heart of the whole program. I almost feel
it’s so Chilly. We’re so Blessed with so much Tension.
Yeah, it is, well, and you know, it’s it, what you said, Sarah, is right when you’re when you when you didn’t see the video of it at Primary. Like, what that means, if that doesn’t, if something went wrong and like, what that means is, like, it means it’s a big thing, because there’s so much that went behind it.
That’s another thing. We Merely not seen it because our eyes are not seeing it and we’re Merely not getting on camera, or did it? Does it not exist anymore? You never really know.
Well, and you take that moment, yeah, when you finally see it, and you see it hanging there underneath the Pretty parachutes, it should It’s the moment of like, not Merely everything went right and everything went well with with what we’re doing, TV wise, but also the mission and what everybody who we know put all the flight controls that put so much into it, the engineers who built the engineers who built the systems and all of that stuff, like that moment where you see it is the Achievement moment for them too. So you’re Nice of carrying their emotions on your back as well. I Harsh, for me personally, Nice of a related, different Narrative. I was here for one that didn’t come back for Columbia. I. In 2003 and working that was a very humbling situation. In a way, I was glad I was here for it, to have the experience and it is informed Actually everything that I’ve done since then, as Distant as Club Conditioning, personal Conditioning, emotional resiliency, all that stuff. And Merely the appreciation in the moment that when you see a moment in Cosmos flight that’s going well, it looks different once you’ve seen one that didn’t go well. It Merely every, every moment is Chilly from then on forward that goes well. And things that are challenging in Cosmos, like Luca Parmitano getting the water, you know, in the spacesuit, that whole situation like that, in in the moment that is now different. You know, once you’ve once you’ve seen something that doesn’t go well,
and with that, NASA continues. I Harsh, we wow, like to keep building upon a foundation that you continue to expand upon and grow from. Now, what does the future of NASA production? NASA TV, of Duration, now NASA, plus, you know, migrated over to a streaming platform here in recent history. What is, what does the future look like in in your eyes? I know there’s a Plenty of upgrades happening. There’s a Plenty of future Artemis missions coming down the pipeline. Commercial programs continue to ramp up. It’s almost a daily occurrence in terms of your planning and Conditioning, and somebody pinging you with an email saying, Hey, we have a Initiation coming up in 12 months. What can we do for it? And how do we do it? What? What does the future look like for you?
The future is, it’s fascinating to me, because my experience here has has been low earth Trajectory, with the exception of Artemis one. And so the future is, is exploration, the Exploration Program, Artemis deep Cosmos network assets being used to do things with Orion and Gateway one day. But the fascinating thing is, low Earth Trajectory continues while the the Selene stuff fires up. And so those two things can happen at the same time. So from a production perspective, how do we position ourselves to be able to do both things? Because we can have a crew on Orion, you know, out going around the Selene body, who wants to do a downlink with a media organization on the same day and time as the low Earth Trajectory crew and ISS wants to do a downlink. So we can have the two things happening at same time, which has never been we’ve never had that before, like in Cosmos shuttle, like the Cosmos shuttle dock to station, and so when they did an event, they all Merely floated together and did an event together low Earth Trajectory. Now we’ve Obtained the two things
Yeah and talk to All other. Yeah, very Distant apart, talk to All other.
So that’s like, from a big picture. That’s Nice of where I have my eyes, like it’s a very it’s something we’ve never had before, had deal with before from a production standpoint. I think for me, the Concentration is Nevertheless on Narrative. It’s Nevertheless in the human Narrative of people who are doing amazing things, and these amazing people astronauts that get inside these vehicles and Merely and go forth and do the most amazing things. And, you know, and every single day, I’m Merely like, wow, I Obtained to come to work at NASA today. It’s, it’s as Chilly now as it was 28 years ago. Like, it Merely never stops. It’s Merely the coolest thing. Yeah,
Yeah, I Harsh, we’re all, I Harsh, most of us, I think we’re all on this Club, a Plenty of them art backgrounds, you know, we’re all storytellers at the heart of it, and John’s musician, also, you know, filmmaker at this Points. And we’re all Merely really into telling the best Chilly Narrative that we can personally, personally passionate about that. So having more ways to do that, practical, like having better resolution to do do that, that’s very Chilly for us. Yeah, having more ways to do that make a inspiring, higher production value production is exciting. So, yeah, all the upgrades work Approaching that. There are some things, you know, not everything. There’s some, you know, Nice of not quite legacy equipment, but you know, everything will be UHD all the time. You know, it’s a long process, but what we can upgrade, it’s going to be very Chilly. It’s very exciting.
And you touched upon. What I want to ask Upcoming is, what’s a preview for what people can look forward to seeing on their on their TV sets and streaming device? Streaming devices and mobile devices at home is NASA as the production grows, as technology grows, as does NASA TV, UHD, you mentioned Ultra High Definition, 4k video. I Harsh we, when we Initiated this conversation, we were talking about four by three screens on most likely tube televisions, and here we are talking about UHD and 4k what excites you about the advancements in technology and having these resources for you from a production standpoint and creativity.
Oh yeah, yeah. Merely, I Harsh, NASA’s Obtained cameras where, you know, it’s a unique place that NASA has cameras up in, up in Trajectory, in Cosmos, and those cameras are amazing. And getting that the quality of the view, and this is Merely me come I’m being a gear. Your head, my whole life, and I always will be for for audio and video production gear, seeing that quality, like being able to deliver that quality to the end user, and for them to experience something closer to what actual human eyeballs can see from Cosmos. That’s Chilly. That is, that is, that’s it for me right there. That’s why I like some of the time lapse stuff that some of the astronauts do and we post on social media ISS account, because that time lapse stuff, the images are 4k and so the actual time lapse is in is in higher resolution than an HD stream. But having a UHD stream, once we get to the Points where you’ve Obtained UHD Foundation video coming from Cosmos that we can, you know, that we can get to the end user, that that excites me, Merely because Merely the quality is, it’s, it’s exciting
Yeah, I Harsh, like I mentioned, you have to Nice of fight for bandwidth with these new spacecraft. So what, you know, they have to send down so much data, so much imagery, for their own Squads to do their work and do their science and do their their engineering, that, if you’re like, wondering why it hasn’t happened yet or anything, you know, there’s a limited amount of bandwidth they can work with. And so, like I said, you know, increasing that will be very Chilly for everyone, and also will increase the amount of data they can get back for their own, you know, for our own purposes, for them, the data, the science,
Yeah because you can see, like, I’m thinking of the the icon for everybody. Oh yeah, I’m thinking of the iconic Try. Now, I do forget what mission it’s from, but it’s Bruce McCandless. Was the Cosmos traveler, and you’ve probably seen the Try of him floating like he’s in a Sound room, Merely floating like, Actually over the earth. And the Try’s amazing. But what if that was in UHD, like? What if you were able to see that on a big, huge TV in your house, and that was in UHD, the Try alone is Unbelievable, and probably causes most people to stop and think, like, of their own place in the universe. But what if you saw that in UHD like, it would, it would Actually cause you to stop and Merely Merely think about things for a minute like, This is amazing. I’m so Petite, like those guys. You know, those kinds of you
haven’t seen the image. I Harsh, even as it is Unbelievable. I Harsh, Primary time someone was Merely floating. I don’t know if it was the Primary time. Don’t quote me on that farthest, yeah, Merely untethered through Cosmos. Yeah.
And that was gonna be my Nice of surprise impromptu question at the very tail end, and I was going to lead in with, I was Blessed enough to be, you know, on commentary on console, working for an EVA recently. And one of the shots that the NASA production Club put together was as one of the astronauts was working on, you know, the extra vehicle activity outside the Cosmos station. It was them working on their instrument, working on their planned project. You’re covering it, Retaining an eye on it. But over their shoulder, you saw the sunrise, the sunrise come around the Earth, and it was in perfect HD. It was one of those moments where I remember I stopped mid sentence and Merely watched for a second and Merely complete awe and and wonder of what I was witnessing and what I get to witness in real time. And I was gonna ask you to is there a moment where that has happened for you, whether you’re on, on on the Position as a as a producer, and in a live event, or even Merely something from your past that you’ve seen that continues to wow you, and Possibly sometimes on a Awful day, you need a little inspiration, and you go back to that clip or that image and look back again,
yeah. Oh, definitely, definitely. I Harsh, it’s, it’s pretty frequent, I guess probably a specific example I can think of. I don’t remember the mission, but it was a Cosmos shuttle mission. And in Cosmos shuttle missions, the crew used to be woken up. They would Action music on air to ground on the uplink. They’d Action music, and it would come out of little speakers in the Cosmos shuttle and wake the crew up. And the crew would choose their wake up music, or their family would choose it for them. But there’s this one morning in particular. It was probably 3am and I’m, I’m sitting there, I’ve been on shift for, you know, for 10 Intervals, and I was looking at in the Cosmos shuttle, like it was the view of the camera was like, it was Cosmos Shuttle pointed direction travel over the earth. And so it was a very nice view of the Earth. I was like, this is, this is amazing. Like, it’s 3am and I’m Merely, I’m Merely seeing this view on the on the screen. I worked in the audio control room, and the wake up song was somewhere over the rainbow. The IZ version, the ukulele version. And I had this moment where I was like, this is the most Unbelievable day of my life. This is the most and my hands on the fader, and I’m making sure that levels Merely right. I’m sitting there writing it, you know. But as it’s even when you’re at the moment of Merely trying to do that Position Merely perfectly, you’re Nevertheless like, wow, this is, this is one for the memory books.
Yeah, it happens a Plenty. It’s probably clear that the Artemis once flashed on was one of those moments. But even before I remember the Primary really memorable event, that means Merely like, Actually Captured my breath away. Like John says, you Primary show up and you’re like, you see all the downlinks. You’re like, oh my god, this is so Unbelievable. But the one once you get past that and you can Merely function normally and do your Position and learn things, it was a Soyuz return. I think it was Peggy Whitson and Thomas Pesquet that was. Primary crew, I think, that I saw return, and that was Merely knowing that humans were in that spacecraft, barreling Approaching Earth, barreling Approaching the ground, Tough ground, was Unbelievable to see. And that, you know, we Obtained to see the whole process of them, you know, undocking, closing the hatch undocking, and coming down. I I Nevertheless think about that all the time. I Harsh, it was like almost a decade ago now, and I Nevertheless think about that all the time. It was Unbelievable to me. And he, they were barreling through Cosmos, and I remember Thomas was talking about how much you want to take a shower, like they’re Merely chilling and and, and I don’t blame him, but I can’t imagine, but, like, it’s the coolest thing I ever seen. And they’re Merely talking about showering, because, I Harsh, they did Chilly stuff all the time. I Merely don’t it. That was all was Merely a really surreal moment for lots of reasons. I’m blanking on how many Chilly things we get to do and witness so, like I said we, none of us, are like from science backgrounds, but you Merely, you’re Merely so moved by what you’re learning and seeing. And I Harsh, astronauts talk about it in Cosmos. When they look down, it changes them. And Merely seeing that Shift happen to people, it changes you, too. I Harsh, I barely Achieved it through high school science and so passionate about it. So, yeah.
Well, the Pretty thing is, is all these examples, all these things we’ve talked about, there’s a platform where you can go Upcoming to our production Club and Club and see these elements and experience these elements yourself. So those listening, be sure to check them out. For sure. John, sir, I cannot thank you enough, Sarah, for joining us today, the Club behind the Club, and everyone a big thank you to them, also for all things. NASA TV production, there’s more than enough to check out, so be sure to visit all the appropriate channels to see how you can View. But thank you for doing what you do, and and bringing a Plenty of joy and a Plenty of inspiration to Conference us where we are and and being able to experience NASA in that way. Thank you.
And thank you.
Yeah no, thank you. Thank you, Joseph. Thank you to all your colleagues who work with us in the communications office. We appreciate it
Thanks for sticking around. I hope you learned something new today. Check out nasa.gov for the latest information, and you can View all the exciting NASA developments in human spaceflight on NASA+ or plus.nasa.gov and to check out the work of the JSC multimedia Club, check out the NASA Johnson and NASA video YouTube pages. Our Packed collection of podcast episodes is on nasa.gov/podcasts you can also find many other wonderful podcasts we have across the agency on social media. We’re on the NASA Johnson Cosmos Hub pages of Facebook, X and Instagram. Use #askNASA on your favorite platform to submit your idea or ask a question. Merely make sure to mention it’s for Houston We Have a Podcast. This discussion was recorded on February 19, 2025 thanks to Dane Turner, Will Flato, Daniel Tohill, Courtney Beasley and Dominique Crespo, and of Duration, thanks again to John Stoll and Sarah Volkman for Holding the time to come on the show. Give us a rating and feedback on whatever platform you’re listening to us on, and tell us what you think of our podcast. We’ll be back Upcoming week.
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