This Week in Space 154 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

0:00:00 - Tariq Malik
On this episode of this Week in Space, NASA makes some doge cuts, Boeing Starliner slips to 2026, and Liam Kennedy from Senn and ISS Above is going to tell us what that overview effect is and what it's like to build a camera that beams live video from space. So tune in, don't miss it.

0:00:25 - Rod Pyle
This is this Week in Space, episode number 154, recorded on March 28th 2025. The View From On High. Hello and welcome to another episode of this Week in Space the View From On High edition. I'm Rod Pyle, editor-in-chief of Ad Astra Magazine.

0:00:48 - Tariq Malik
I'm joined by my orbiting buddy, Tariq Malik, editor-chief at space.com. Hello partner, hello Rod, how are you doing today?

0:00:50 - Rod Pyle
Happy Friday, I'm doing okay, there's a whole story there, but I'm not going to go into it because why waste people's time with my problems?

We'll be joined very shortly by Liam Kennedy, who is a very cool guy, an old friend of both Tarek's, myself and the gentleman behind ISS Above, which is one of the coolest products you're going to hear about between now and Christmas, and also working with the company Ascend that has installed cameras on the International Space Station that you can access in 4K, which is not something that NASA ever provided you, so that's incredibly cool, which is not something that NASA ever provided you, so that's incredibly cool. Now, before we start, because we're cool too sometimes please don't forget to do us a solid. Make sure to like and subscribe and do the other podcast things, because we love you and we need to know that you love us. All right, and now it's time for a space joke. I'm ready.

0:01:40 - Tariq Malik
I look forward to it. Oh whoa, Thank you very much. That's fun Is that new?

0:01:48 - Rod Pyle
Yes, this one comes from my friend, James Golden, who I've been working with for a few months. Brilliant guy. Hey, Tariq, yes Rod, why did Winnie the Pooh go to space?

0:02:01 - Tariq Malik
I don't know Rod for honey.

0:02:07 - Rod Pyle
To meet. Eeyore To meet.

0:02:11 - Tariq Malik
Eeyore to meet Eeyore. I know it's all the process that doesn't deserve a yes what?

0:02:15 - Rod Pyle
no, I'll do one then. Okay, thank you. Now I've heard some people want to send us to an international space station with his joke time of this show, but you can help by sending us your best, worst or most indifferent space joke to twits at twittv. I like that one, we will use them and give you credit, and I like it too, mr Cranky Pants, john Ashley, yeah okay, all right, everyone's a critic. Let's move on to the news from Space News. Yes, from Space News Headline News.

0:02:47 - Tariq Malik
Headline oh, I missed it hey.

0:02:50 - Rod Pyle
John Ashley is on the case Headline. Sorry from Space News. We have NASA cutting $420 million via our friends at Doge Not our friends. Now, is this the science budget or something else?

0:03:06 - Tariq Malik
so these are contracts. Yeah, this, this was something that uh NASA confirmed. So jeff faust over at uh over at space news, uh spotted this one, because doge tweeted out on Friday how great a job NASA did, cutting or terminating 420 million dollars in contracts uh and um. And Bethany stevens, the NASA press secretary, confirmed it uh to space news uh saying saying that they did in fact get those. Now Doge called these unneeded contracts. Bethany Stevens. She said that NASA was committed to optimizing their workforce in cooperation with Doge and that these were, I guess, either extraneous or contracts they didn't truly have to have. You know that they're redundant or misaligned.

0:03:48 - Rod Pyle
You mean things like showing the public and I'm referring to my contract here, which was canceled a year and a half ago like showing the public what NASA is actually doing with their money. That's considered extraneous, because why would we want to be accountable to the public for their tax dollars we're spending by demonstrating what's actually happening in the good works, apparently, yeah.

0:04:09 - Tariq Malik
I mean, I could write you a book. Well, I couldn't write you. I could tell you how I would want to write you a book.

0:04:13 - Rod Pyle
You keep claiming you're going to write a book.

0:04:16 - Tariq Malik
About all of the transparency stuff that's not happening right now. It's a pain in the half, but this was one of the the first like really significant, I think confirmations about doge cuts from contracts and whatnot, uh and uh, and I'm sure it's not going to be the last you know uh. So I thought it was worth kind of flagging to let everyone know that this is going on, because it's budget season, we're waiting for the, the skinny budget from the, the new administration to see. And if, if you always care about NASA funding, this is the time to write your representative or senator and say, hey, support this, that kind of thing.

0:04:51 - Rod Pyle
And try and keep it civil. All right, exactly Now, the rest of space.com? Oh, hold on Boeing Starliner in 2026.

0:05:01 - Tariq Malik
Oh yeah.

0:05:02 - Rod Pyle
Why are you laughing? What's happening why?

0:05:03 - Tariq Malik
are you laughing? Because I'm cruel.

0:05:08 - Rod Pyle
No, oh yeah. Why are you laughing? Why?

0:05:09 - Tariq Malik
are you laughing Because I'm cruel? No, because Starliner kind of made itself a bit of a punchline. Yeah, we got an update finally from NASA and Boeing this week about the plans for testing During the Crew 9 landing. There were a lot of questions to NASA's Commercial Crew Office about what is happening with Starliner, when will it fly astronauts etc. And what NASA outlined was their big plan to really I guess, soup to nuts test the helium issues that they had on the thrusters out in the desert over the summer with a goal of a late 2025, but most likely early 2026.

Next Starliner crew launch. I believe it's a crew launch right now, but it's still. I guess it all depends on how these tests go. And to remind people, there were issues with the helium leaks in their propulsion system and the failure of five of 28 RCS thrusters basically during this last flight that they have to address in different ways. They have now outlined their test campaign for that. It's going to happen over the next few weeks and months through the summer over at White Sands and hopefully meet NASA and Boeing specs to get astronauts back on board this thing.

0:06:21 - Rod Pyle
I think we should go out and help them by inhaling helium and talking like chipmunks. We should do a whole episode like that. That'd be awesome. Yeah, oh, that's a good idea. Of course, that means you've got to breathe a lot of helium in an hour. Okay, which one do you want to do next?

0:06:35 - Tariq Malik
Well, we can do a couple of things. I think Shotgun mode right, because we're talking about Boeing and commercial spacecraft, just Boeing and commercial spacecraft. Just to let everybody know, there was an issue that you don't see every day. Northrop Grumman's next cargo launch on a Cygnus spacecraft, which right now is launching on SpaceX rockets until Northrop Grumman builds a new one, actually has been cancelled. They're going to skip Northrop Grumman CRS-22, go straight to CRS-23 in the fall, because the spacecraft itself was damaged when it was being shipped from Europe after final assembly to Florida. They were hoping it was just the canister that it was in.

0:07:09 - Rod Pyle
So this is the Antares rocket?

0:07:12 - Tariq Malik
No, it's the Cygnus spacecraft, the cargo ship.

0:07:15 - Liam Kennedy
So the.

0:07:15 - Tariq Malik
Antares rocket right now is in engine redevelopment, so it's going to have a US-built engine and so while they're waiting for that, they're launching on SpaceX Dragon.

0:07:29 - Leo Laporte
NASA has said that they're going to add food and supplies and stuff.

0:07:30 - Tariq Malik
So that there isn't too much of an impact. But the actual ATV itself got damaged. Yeah, the actual spacecraft, the actual Cygnus spacecraft for this flight got damaged and apparently to the point where it's either unsalvageable or can't be fixed in time for a spring launch. So the next one will be in the fall for a spring launch. So the next one will be in the fall. They'll amp up the deliveries on a, on a visiting dragon, in April, so that there is enough food, is enough water, all that stuff for the crew, and hopefully things will be. We'll work out.

0:07:56 - Rod Pyle
So how would you like to be the guy named cliff, who was actually the one that secured the straps around the Cygnus and, as it was being lifted, one of the snaps the straps. Let go and bang down, it went.

0:08:08 - Tariq Malik
I would very much not like to be that guy.

0:08:11 - Rod Pyle
Yeah, that would be a bad day. Okay, but speaking of launches, just very quick note.

0:08:16 - Tariq Malik
We will have a historic launch on March 31st. That is the FRAM-2 mission.

0:08:22 - Liam Kennedy
Yeah, it's exciting.

0:08:23 - Tariq Malik
It's the first ever human spaceflight over Earth's poles, and this is financed. It's one of those private missions that SpaceX launched by I'm going to get this wrong a cryptocurrency magnate is how we described him from Malta, Chen Wang, who is paying for the whole thing. Everything is private. There's some really interesting people on board, but they'll spend about a week in space doing science experiments, and it's very much in that same mold as the Isaacman Polaris flights right, so SpaceX has a line for these, but they're launching Polar from Florida, and that'll be very exciting.

0:08:59 - Rod Pyle
Which has never, ever, ever been done.

0:09:01 - Tariq Malik
It's never been done before.

0:09:03 - Rod Pyle
I mean military satellites go in polar orbits, but never a crewed one, so this is a big deal, and he has single-handedly raised the percentage of Maltese citizens that are astronauts to be higher than anywhere else on the planet. Right, because only Lichtenstein or the Vatican would even compare.

0:09:21 - Tariq Malik
Yeah, yeah, so that's great and he's bringing. He has a Janica Mikkelsen from a Norwegian filmmaker, as the FRAM2 mission commander. He has Robbie I think it's Roger is how you pronounce her last name as the pilot. She's an engineer and scientist from Germany. She specializes in robotics and polar research. Big, big mission for her to fly over the poles from space. You have Eric phil, uh, phillips as their medical officer. He's a australian polar explorer and uh, and so they're gonna have a good week in space and uh, really, just, you know, they get, they got their own experiments, of course, uh, but they're gonna see some sites that we haven't seen, uh, and you know, ever with human eyes okay, uh, hold on, I'm stifling a yawn.

0:10:03 - Rod Pyle
Katy Perry has a launch date.

0:10:11 - Tariq Malik
Katy Perry's going to. That's right. We talked about Katy Perry going to space on the all-female Blue Origin launch. Now we know when it's the day before tax day, april 14th, she launches with Gayle King and Jeff Bezos' fiancée who is kind of organizing the whole flight, and it's an all-female mission. Of course, it's the first all-female mission since Valentina Tereshkova in the 60s, which I was really surprised to learn that stat. You'd think that that would have happened before.

0:10:34 - Rod Pyle
Well, that's only because she was solo.

0:10:37 - Tariq Malik
Yeah, exactly, exactly. So just a quick note, if you're wondering where that mission is, that's where that mission is. And then finally, then finally, just as a reminder, there is a solar eclipse, uh, tomorrow a partial solar, a partial solar eclipse uh over the, the, the, you know far northern us and canada, but canada is the best place to be. Of course, at space.com we will have uh live streams. It starts quite early, like 5, 30 in the morning so you have to wait.

0:11:03 - Rod Pyle
You're showing a picture there in in your article of an annular. This isn't an annular, right no?

0:11:08 - Tariq Malik
it's a partial solar eclipse yeah so, uh, so, but uh, annulars can also be partial solar eclipses until they're total, so well they never really get total yeah, exactly, um, so, uh, well, the hybrid ones do. But anyway, we're not here to parlance eclipse talk. We're here to say there's an eclipse coming. Everyone should go see it or watch it online. It's worth getting it up.

0:11:28 - Rod Pyle
Just say look at the cover of the upcoming issue of Ad Astra magazine. If you're on video, ooh, look at that. See the Chesley Bonestell inspired. This is Jim Vaughn, our cover illustrator, who does really great work. And who does really great work, and actually the cover illustration which I've been dying to use for a couple of years, even though it's kind of, you know, not exactly realistic to be hanging out right next to Saturn like that anytime soon. But inspired me to write a story about a big study that came out of JPL a while back on outer solar system human crew admissions.

0:12:02 - Tariq Malik
So I would love to see that in a bookstore near you Very soon.

0:12:07 - Rod Pyle
This is the hard proof check copy, so it'll be in the mail in a couple of weeks.

0:12:12 - Tariq Malik
I'll have to pick one up. I'll have to pick one up when I see it at Barnes and Noble.

0:12:15 - Rod Pyle
Or just join the National Space Society at NSSorg and you can get free copies by being a member. Wow. Maybe I'll do that instead One every three months. All right, we are going to run to a quick break and then we'll be back with Liam Kennedy. So strap in and we are back with Liam Kennedy, who is the founder and inventor of ISS Above and a space TV director for SIN. Liam, what does it mean to be a space TV director? Because that's something that sounds very cool and I wish I was one.

0:12:51 - Liam Kennedy
I know exactly what you mean, rod. Yeah, what does that space TV director actually mean? It really means just whatever I make it up to mean, but, yeah, it's the coolest job title I've ever had. Thank you so much to Charles Black, who's the founder of Senn Black, who's the founder of CEN, and we are an organization that is set up to stream live views of the Earth from space and allow that to be free to the public to view. And Space TV is actually the name of our payload, which is on the International Space Station and streaming those live views to the Earth right now. And so, space TV director I guess I'm technically the dude who is pulling the strings on, you know, camera one, camera two, camera three on the space station. So that's part of what I do, and every day I'm capturing clips from our payload and then our team are curating those, sharing them on socials and obviously making them available to everyone 24-7 through our streaming channel, both on YouTube and on our own website, sendcom.

0:14:15 - Rod Pyle
All right. Well, we're going to have a lot more questions about that, but before I have my questions, Tariq has his trademark question for you.

0:14:23 - Tariq Malik
Yeah, well, you know, liam, whenever new guests come on the show, we usually like to ask what their space story is. What was your road to space that led you to become a space director? I know you've done some other work too, including founding ISS Above, which we've got links to, too, on our sheet here. But what was it? Was it something when you were a kid that really grabbed you and you were like I'm going to find my place in this space per se? Or was it just like a happenstance discovery that happened later on in life?

0:14:57 - Liam Kennedy
Yeah, so I'll start. First of all, the very initial part of me that sort of got inspired to do all of this was my six-year-old version of me. That was how old I was when the Apollo moon landing was happening. So at six years old I was the guy in the UK that's where I'm from and I was the reason that my whole family had to stay up all night and wait for the moon landing to happen. And I heard later in life that my siblings were rather ticked off with me that I was the one that did that, but they forgave me in the end. So I've always been interested in space for as long as I can remember. Obviously, I moved over to the US at one point, started up a software development company in the late 90s and into the 2000s and during that time got involved a lot in live streaming, was doing live streaming of events for quite some time and then during that I got hooked on astronomy and space. I was president of Orange County Astronomers in Orange County, california.

0:16:16 - Tariq Malik
Oh my gosh, you're good at neighbors. There you go. I used to work there with the Los Angeles Times.

0:16:23 - Liam Kennedy
There you go. So you know, really, just that's what got me into this, and I started out a public access TV show called Look Up Tonight, and that got me you know when you have that kind of thing.

You know you have a reason to connect with people like the Planetary Society and JPL and I had lots of interviews and things like that with those folks and I had lots of interviews and things like that with those folks. But really what's inspired me is to be someone who is like an informal educator for the public about space and science, and my show then was called Look Up Tonight. And part of what we do many astronomers do you take your telescopes out to the public and you show them amazing things in the skies and what was happening, if you remember end of the 90s, was when the space station was being built.

0:17:23 - Tariq Malik
Yeah.

0:17:24 - Liam Kennedy
So commonly part of the evening show was oh, look up, there is a space shuttle about to dock with the space station, and all of that got me really understanding that the public many of them had no clue that we even had an international space station.

0:17:44 - Leo Laporte
Yeah.

0:17:45 - Liam Kennedy
So it was my job to make sure that people understood that that was happening, and that's where I invented this little thing behind me called the ISS Above, and you'll see it's flashing. It's a Raspberry Pi computer that tracks the space station and lights up whenever the station is above.

0:18:04 - Rod Pyle
Let's get into that detail later because I need to jump in with some more questions. Go for it. And I have to ask you where the heck were you when I was running Pasadena community television for a year and a half? Because I was stuck with endless city council meetings, cat lady videos of all their cute kittens, but my favorite was a woman who did, who staged a sitcom in her garden with plants talking to each other and it was actually very clever, a little insane, but very clever but I would have killed to have your show or your feed on what we were doing.

0:18:42 - Tariq Malik
But you were in pasadena, home of jpl and the planetary society.

0:18:44 - Rod Pyle
Right, this was 91.

0:18:45 - Tariq Malik
There was no way to get that stuff for us. I want to commend liam, just just. I mean the live stream, like getting into that in the 90s when it was still like on the pages it was dial up, yeah, yeah 4400.

0:19:06 - Liam Kennedy
That's right, we did dial up.

0:19:08 - Tariq Malik
Uh, I live streamed a whole astronomy conference from uc irvine in 1998.

0:19:16 - Rod Pyle
From dial up to the international space station. Sometime in the early late 80s, I guess it was, we did the shuttle return to flight at griffith observatory and I had to organize getting a signal. So we got a temporary satellite dish. I think it was k-band or ku band or something. I mean, it's huge. It was the size of a car just to get the live link so we could put it up in the planetarium theater. Anyway, that's what we're here to talk about. So what is the difference between ISS Above and CEN? That was something I'm not quite clear on.

0:19:43 - Liam Kennedy
Yeah, so I created ISS Above in 2013 to inspire really, it was to inspire my grandson Owen to know. Every time the astronauts were above, my thing was having more people aware that this was going on, and the way that I did that was to hook people in by having this cool gizmo that lights up when the space station's above, and that's what was featured on early episodes of Coding 101, on Twit yeah, a whole set of things like that.

0:20:17 - Rod Pyle
He's a friend of the family, John he's got pictures of him with his arm draped around Leo's shoulder and Leo's looking real happy and everything. So yeah, he's an old timer.

0:20:29 - Liam Kennedy
So but what that device does? You plug it into a TV and it shows you all this info about every time the space station's passing by the crew. And then, in April 2014, was when NASA started live streaming views of the Earth from their own cameras full-time, and that was through an experiment called HDEV, the High Definition Earth Viewing Experiment. And what that really showed is when I started displaying that through the ISS Above over here that all the folks who got one through a Kickstarter if you've been to the Planetary Society office and any time since then, my ISS aboves are attached to every single big screen TV that's in the Planetary Society offices and been there since 2015, whenever they moved it into that new place. So through all of that time, these devices were in schools and science centers. There's now 5,000 of these all around the world and schools feature this live video feed from NASA's camera. They have been doing it for all that time. But I discovered early on that the live feed from NASA's cameras was not guaranteed. There were times when HDEV was supposed to be removed in 2017. Luckily, it didn't, but it eventually died in 2019.

So I, the dude who just created this thing for my grandkids. So I, the dude who just created this thing for my grandkids. I wanted to make sure that there was a secure system that provided live views of the earth to the public. When you have this kind of system and you have schools teachers relying upon it, you really do appreciate how much the public appreciates these views when they know it's available. So I personally went on my own journey to try and secure upgraded cameras, because you're probably like me, you want things to be as high quality as they possibly can, and that's so. I was on a journey to upgrade them from the low quality, high def that NASA had to higher quality 4k and Sen is really for me that ultimate fulfillment of the promise that I gave to myself and to the public that we would have upgraded cameras and a camera system that would be available free to the public.

0:23:18 - Rod Pyle
So I'm the guy that you know people will say that kind of thing. Do you surely want the highest quality? And I mean, I worked in television for 20 years and half the time I look at it and go what? This isn't the highest quality. I don't know if it's just my old eyes or just ignorance of my part, but we're going to find out when we come back from this break. So stand by, we'll be right back, all right.

0:23:41 - Tariq Malik
Tarek, you're up. Well, yeah, I guess that's the next question. Was that evolution to sin? I mean, there may be people out there, liam, who don't know what Senn is and how that story took place. And there is a difference. I am one of those whose heart was broken when the HDF cameras went offline and we have these other ones here and you can tell now and I don't know if it's too much of a spoiler the difference between watching a spacecraft arrive or leave the station through the Senn cameras versus that one that's still working on the space station that stretches out the vehicles and makes them look like cartoons of themselves.

0:24:21 - Rod Pyle
When you say that one that stretches out, you mean the NASA camera.

0:24:24 - Tariq Malik
The NASA camera yeah, the older one that is clearly all grainy for what we're all using. So explain what Senn is. You know you found obviously like minds to make this happen and it wasn't like you snapped your fingers and you got cameras on the International Space Station overnight. So what is CEN? What's the goal? To, I guess, evolve that view from space passion that you have. I guess, evolve that view from space.

0:24:52 - Liam Kennedy
You know passion that you have, yeah. So CEN, at its heart, is a company that's set out to stream live views of the earth and of other locations from space and make them available free to the public, and I've got to credit Charles Black, the CEO, for coming up with that idea when he was just in the early days of his journey through college, where he just had the vision that that's what he wanted to leave as a legacy.

0:25:29 - Tariq Malik
We should point out. Just sorry to interrupt, but for people that are watching the stream, we got views of a Starliner undocking. That was absolutely spectacular.

0:25:36 - Rod Pyle
This isn't live. This is not live. This is not live. Starliner hasn't returned.

0:25:41 - Tariq Malik
It was Just so that people understand that level of resolution is like sci-fi movie level. So okay, sorry.

0:25:52 - Liam Kennedy
Let's go back to that moment. I'll fill in the blanks in a little bit, but yeah, so here you're seeing that view of Starliner as it's undocking, and the incredible part of the Sen story is that is that we only started live streaming 30 minutes before that happened.

I know started live streaming 30 minutes before that happened and we shared the link to people that we know at Johnson Space Center in the flight control room. We actually shared it with the lead flight director, ed Van Syce, and also Chris Hadfield, who's an advisor and astronaut ambassador with us, shared it with other people at the flight control system there, so they were watching our feed right as this was happening and it was a truly iconic moment and just amazing that the stars aligned almost, because that camera system launched March of last year really about this time and it wasn't installed until the end of August and then, just a short while after, is when Starliner undocked and you got that view. So the camera system that's on the space station is not the first camera that we've had in space. In fact, we've been on two prior systems and this is what got my attention. Remember when we were all crying ourselves to sleep, Tariq, when the HDEV died. It was July 29th or something was when it was in 2019.

I was at the ISS R&D conference giving another presentation there about my ideas for replacing the cameras, so that died. But earlier on that year May 2019, I discovered that there was this company called Sen who launched their own hosted payload of a set of six cameras on a satellite called Arabsat-A, I think it is. It was actually built by Russian Energia and Charles's. He'd managed to get this six-camera system on that satellite and then it was really used. Its primary purpose was to capture spacecraft operations like solar panels opening and things like that, but he designed it in such a way the engineers designed it that it would be able to live stream for the very first time, 4k Earth views, and that happened in May of 2019. So that's when, shortly after that, that's where I reached out to Charles and we got talking about all of the further ideas that were going on to get.

Eventually. I was the guy that was just outside of all of this and selfishly wanted, for the benefit of you and others, that we would have that capability on the space station, and the result is, yes, we've got that. But between then and now, cen also have their own satellite called ETV-A1, earth TV. That was built by a third party and we integrated our camera system onto that. That was launched in January of 2022, been up there ever since, and that was really another test case. Been up there ever since and that was really another test case. So all of those were about testing our completely custom design sensors, lens, all of the processing power, all of that is under our control, and that's now what is on the space station. Now you may wonder how on earth you know we're a commercial company. How do we get there?

0:30:16 - Tariq Malik
How do you make money doing that, Liam, if you're providing live views of Earth for free.

0:30:21 - Liam Kennedy
Yeah, so it's for free, as you'll expect, with a catch. The catch is that, yeah, it's on platforms where there will be advertising. So consequently, like right now, if you were to go to YouTube, you would see ads coming in every now and again, unless you have YouTube Premium. So if ever there was a reason to get YouTube Premium, this is the reason to get it.

0:30:48 - Rod Pyle
So, excuse me, if I'm on YouTube, what am I looking up?

0:30:51 - Liam Kennedy
Yeah, so the Sen channel is just called Sen. So if you just go to youtubecom, slash at Sen, or even just Sen, it will take you to the YouTube channel and then there's only one live stream on there. You will see hundreds of clips. So the best place to see clips is actually on sendcom. We curate them there.

The other way that, yes, there are opportunities for us to return investor value is that folks can purchase the clips. So, although it's free for private use, it's not available for people to download the clips and use them themselves without coming to us for a proper license. So, as you'd expect for any organization that is involved in media, they sort of work with that. So you can get the clips in various different ways. And the other part of this is that think of us as the go-to location for live views of the Earth in this case, but we have plans for other destinations too. But really, wherever people want to be included in the space race, we want to be the eyes. So, rather than as an afterthought sort of like, you know, there can be operational reasons to have cameras on spacecraft. We and, by the way, the live feed right now is just about to be sunrise, so, if there was any way to bring it up, sunrise is happening at this very second. There you go.

0:32:48 - Rod Pyle
I know it's looking at the corner and you see the other bit that's lighting up there. Sorry to the people listening to the audio stream, but this is sensational.

0:32:56 - Tariq Malik
Yeah, the sun is rising in the lower right corner. There is a dragon spacecraft on the left, docked to the station, slowly being revealed from the blackness of space. Tarek, you should have been on radio.

0:33:06 - Liam Kennedy
You are space TV director. Tarek. That is exactly what. Well, at least play by play.

0:33:13 - Rod Pyle
Hey, I want to ask you what it takes I mean as a normal couple of citizens I mean you and Charles did this together I guess what it takes to get a camera space rated, because I know that ain't easy. I've worked with NASA on a couple of space act agreements so I wanted to learn all about that as soon as we get back from this next break. So hold on to your ejection seats, we'll be right back. So let's say, oh, somebody like Tarek wants to fly something to the space station, and then somebody has got to, I guess, take it in their gloved hand to go out and install it on the outside of the space station. Why is it not?

0:33:56 - Tariq Malik
me.

0:33:57 - Rod Pyle
It should be me to do that. Oh, there's so many reasons you know I mean. So there's requirements about how it's constructed, how it handles electricity, is it outgassing anything nasty that's going to poison the environmental control system? It goes on and on and on. How do you do this without having a billion dollars at your disposal?

0:34:16 - Liam Kennedy
Yeah, that is the big question. You said yeah.

So because it does take a lot. Now, cern obviously went through several stages of proving its technology and having it flight hardware tested. So a lot of that was done through the first project and the second project and then I came into it at a point where I was just this dude who created this cool tool. I've got to say NASA have been very supportive of what I provided through ISS Above. They always love it when someone is adding value to what they're doing. So during that journey I became an education partner with the ISS National Lab, otherwise known as CASIS. They are the group that were designated to get commercial opportunities happening on the space station.

So I'd known for many years that there was a pathway for any kind of commercial company to get their payloads onto the space station, and that's where I found out that there was this new location called Bartolomeo. That's the location on the space station. Location, location, location is what is important, and this is right at the front of the station, has commanding views and in fact I can show you a little demo of where this is and I will get back to the detail of NASA safety reviews and what that meant for going through this. I don't know if you want me to take you on a little journey to show you where this camera is.

0:35:56 - Tariq Malik
Yeah, let's do it, let's do it.

0:35:57 - Liam Kennedy
Yeah, so what we're seeing here, by the way, anyone who has a reason to get this, you can apply to get this software. You could have this and it's the highest resolution, you know, fidelity version of the space station and in fact. So what I'm zooming in here, I'm going over the crew dragon right here, and our camera is right over here On ESA's Columbus module, on the Columbus module, that's right, and our camera doesn't look like a camera system and you can't see the lenses, but it's this little box right here and we have six cameras, two pointed at the docking port, two pointing down and two pointing at the horizon, and that's what we just saw is the docking can and that's where you got to see the great view of the sun rising. But if I go, so I'm going to go up and out a little bit to show you this. So do you remember HDEV? Yes, that was just over here. Hope everyone's enjoying being an astronaut that was really just.

0:37:10 - Rod Pyle
I'm getting vertigo just watching.

0:37:11 - Liam Kennedy
It was just on this corner here, and that's how you could see both forward and aft, because they had a view of the rear, the aft of the station, with the Russian segment, and then also over, this way showing the Earth's limb and such like. So we're relatively close to where that is, but we're on this little shelf called Bartolomeo, and on Bartolomeo there are places for a bunch of different experiments. It's a perfect location for Earth observation because we have this clear, commanding view available to us Nadir, going down and also at the horizon, and then also over here at the docking port, and that's what our live view is showing right now and the current place where NASA has. So when HDEV died, NASA actually went through a couple of different iterations to have cameras available, but where I'm going to take you is where the current one is, which is right over here, and this is. They have a bunch of these scattered around the station, but this one was like a spare one and what they're doing I'm going to swivel it around.

0:38:40 - Rod Pyle
So, for those listening, what you're missing is a high-resolution, software-generated tour of the space station as it sits at this minute, but as directed by our cast.

0:38:56 - Liam Kennedy
Yeah. So then let me just go over this. I'm going the wrong way here.

0:39:08 - Rod Pyle
And I always love it's great radio when the host is saying what you can't see this.

0:39:13 - Leo Laporte
It's a home run.

0:39:15 - Rod Pyle
Goodbye, Mr Spalding.

0:39:17 - Tariq Malik
For folks listening. We've moved from the kind of front end of the station where the send cameras are, to the mid-body along the truss is what it looks like here.

0:39:27 - Liam Kennedy
Yeah, so we're right by the solar alpha rotary joint, the starboard one, and that's where NASA's camera is. And, Terry, do you recognize? So what we've got here? This is the view that is in NASA's camera pretty much, and there's a whole big obstruction in the field of view. This is literally what you see on the main NASA feed. There's a famous thing here called Flap 2, which is basically a spare pump module that was in the way. So this was I'm really just showing you this to say you know, I had your back, Stan, had your back Around.

0:40:09 - Tariq Malik
Earth use. You have this nice camera and there's a big old pump module in the way.

0:40:13 - Liam Kennedy
Those are like the size of a fridge module in the way.

0:40:14 - Tariq Malik
That's right. Those are like the size of a fridge, by the way, those pump modules.

0:40:17 - Liam Kennedy
So all deference to and recognition for NASA, because they had the foresight, there were folks at NASA that said this is what we want to do. We want to make video available for free to the public showing the views of the Earth from the space station. And really what I did I'm one of those people they inspired, so they only have themselves to blame, and that was part of the story I've been poking at NASA since 2016 about are you going to upgrade? When are you going to upgrade? When are you going to upgrade? Oh, there's a chance your camera system can die. What's the replacement? And they luckily took my prodding as something that was. They tolerated it, I would say, but I kept them informed of what I was doing, because along the way to CEN, there were several other companies that I took to NASA to have them consider putting cameras on.

All of those projects didn't come to fruition. I'm so glad that it was CEN that was in the end, because those other companies would have been great. I'd have loved to do them, to work with them, but CEN has its whole mission. Loved to do them, to work with them, but Sen has its whole mission is to do this. It's not to get a particular camera in space. No, it is about the vision that really encompasses the overview effect. That is core to what we're about. You know, it's what drives me, it's what I, it's what you were drawn to, Tariq. You know, with these views, there's something that happens when you really put yourself in the position of this is really happening right now.

0:42:09 - Tariq Malik
That's what I wanted to ask Ness was about that right, because there is. We've heard this on the show from several guests in the past. I've heard it and I know Rod has heard it from astronauts.

0:42:19 - Rod Pyle
Including Frank White.

0:42:21 - Tariq Malik
Exactly.

Yes, the coiner of the term and one of the things that astronauts have told me and have said publicly when they kind of talk this Ron Garan, most notably, I think, wrote a whole book about it is just how I guess how do I want to say it how unified maybe the planet is and the impact of that on the beholder. So can you kind of go into a little bit about that overview, maybe, how it affected you when you saw these views and what value you're hoping your viewers, who are tapping in just to see what the view might be like on any given day, are getting from just seeing the planet in a way that very few like just over 500 or so people have been able to see with their own eyeballs.

0:43:14 - Liam Kennedy
Yeah, so let me take it you mentioned the person who coined the term overview effect is Frank White, good friend of mine, and he wrote the book called.

0:43:28 - Tariq Malik
The Overview Effect. Yeah, Right.

0:43:30 - Liam Kennedy
So that's where it comes to. But he didn't just write a book, he created the book, created the term, before it was really fully acknowledged that that was a thing share what happens to them in space when they look at the Earth and how that works for them. And, yes, you coined it. Great. So, ron Aaron. He created the book called the Orbital Perspective and you know, again in that same theme. Now we all know, yeah, you don't necessarily get to see borders from space, but it's really from that point of view. Now, when I put ISS Above out there, I mercilessly used quotes from customers who described the times when they had it on their TV. This was the old HDEV, and they talk about how they would have neighbors around who hadn't seen this before and they're sitting in front of the TV with their mouths agape at what they're seeing and, as a result, they decide to go up and clear out their neighborhood.

They have a neighborhood clean-out thing, sort of like something that happens in space. They see themselves from space and then the result is that you get action on the ground. So that's orbital perspective, where you take that transformation and then you do something on the ground that improves the way you're living.

0:45:17 - Rod Pyle
So we're very fortunate that an orbital view can't show the mess that is Tarek's studio and my studio, where people would be coming over to help clean us out. I want to come back and talk more about ISS Above as soon as we go to our last break. So stand by us above as soon as we go to our last break, so stand by. So I don't mean to cut you short If you want to talk more about overview effect. I just want to make sure we actually talk about the product before we run out of time. Did you have more to say about overview?

0:45:48 - Liam Kennedy
So what I would say is here take note everyone. The International Space Station passes you by five to eight times every day and many times throughout the week. There will be times when the station's going right over you. If it happens to be during the daytime, you'll see you in daytime and I don't know whether you can run the clip that shows where you and I live, rod. That shows where you and I live, rod. That's the one that shows approaching Long Beach, la. I live a little bit south from there. I'm talking about where your boat is docked Right, but that really gives you a sense of how you can feel connected to what's going on, can feel connected to what's going on in space when you see yourself from space, and especially if it's in real time.

The fact that it's real time is a huge part of what's available here, so it can be in real time over Australia, so throughout the day you'll see it wherever it is. And yes, there are some things going on in the world fires, earthquakes, wars. You know, just the other night we went right over Israel, the Middle East, and it was in the dead of night and there I could pick out where Gaza was. Is Tel Aviv Jerusalem is Tel Aviv Jerusalem, so it's an opportunity for people to see themselves and to really use that as an opportunity to experience the world in that way and feel closer to one another. That's part of it.

0:47:30 - Rod Pyle
And from what I'm seeing, we're seeing an orbital view right now. I don't think it's long beach, but I am pretty certain that my boat looks better from 200 miles up than it does from 10 feet.

0:47:41 - Tariq Malik
Probably does yeah yeah, rod's boat, my old apartment, they're like five blocks away from me.

0:47:46 - Rod Pyle
Okay, just so people understand he was not living in my boat. Um well, you might have been, I didn't own it then. But um, so iss above is a Raspberry Pi computer that you customized. Is that right? Yes, that is exactly it so is that part of the chain that gets me this imagery, or is it strictly what gives me the data about what's going on?

0:48:11 - Liam Kennedy
Yeah, iss Above is just sort of an adjacent thing to what Sen does. It really is that the ISS Above is my origin story of how I got here. Without that and without what it is that Leo did and others at Twit did, I've got to say I don't think I'd be here. Yay, twit did. I've got to say I don't think I'd be here, yay, twit. That really is. I'm honest to goodness, I love the people of Twit and all of the viewers that sort of really made this possible. It's just a little device that allowed me to follow my passion of having the public be aware of every time the astronauts were above. And in fact it's coming sort of full circle because NASA's now invited me to create something called the ISS Above Experience at Space Symposium. So, at Space Symposium at Space Symposium hey, oh, how cool. So at Space Symposium, you know, big space conference.

0:49:19 - Tariq Malik
The space conference, yeah yeah, the one in Colorado. Springs it's the biggest one, yeah.

0:49:24 - Liam Kennedy
Because what is happening is November of this year is the 25th anniversary when astronauts have been living permanently on the space station, and my device is all about letting you know every time those people are above. So ISS Above Experience will be showing that. But the Senn-related part of that is that the live video feed switches from NASA's to Senn's and such like. So it will sort of be that opportunity. So you can. You know I'm not trying to plug ISS Above here in the least, but obviously if you go to issabovecom you'll see how you can get one. There's ways to get the download image. If you're a Raspberry Pi geek, which I know a fair proportion of Twit folks are into, you can build your own as well.

0:50:20 - Rod Pyle
Okay. So the real question, though, is could somebody like Tarek do it?

0:50:25 - Tariq Malik
I don't know.

0:50:26 - Rod Pyle
If you handed me a Raspberry Pi, I'd sit there and start drooling, like my Labrador looking at a milk phone. You know.

0:50:32 - Liam Kennedy
Yeah. So the good thing is it comes in a box. That is just-. I'm trying to sort of show this over here. It comes just in a box with all the instructions. You can have it up and running in five minutes All right. So that version? You just plug it in and away you go. You configure the location in a browser and then, at that point, it's flashing, lighting up every time the space station is above your horizon. Where are you, Tariq, by the way? What part of the universe.

So yeah, we're based in New York City, but I'm based outside, just a little bit outside in New Jersey, okay yeah, so I'll be there in April because the company Arm, which is the big $50 billion company that's behind the Arm processor chip which is in every Raspberry Pi, almost every phone, all of our computers, all of that stuff often has Arm processors. They're in our payload on the space station. I'll have you know as well. They sponsored an ISS above into almost every Queens public library.

0:51:40 - Leo Laporte
Oh, wow.

0:51:41 - Liam Kennedy
So if you ever go into a Queens public library, they now have ISS aboves in every location there, actually over 50. So it's not all of them, but it's almost all of them. So I'll be visiting because they have Space Week in April. We have to go to that Lots of stuff going on, astronauts coming by, and then I'll just be making an appearance, so I look forward to hopefully we can meet up when I'm in town.

0:52:10 - Rod Pyle
I'm always always Before you jump into your next question. We got a question from Outasync on the Discord, which is part of the club. For people who don't know, if you joined, you could be asking questions too. Outasync says so. How about a live 180 degree VR stream?

0:52:26 - Liam Kennedy
Yes, wow that's a bit of a step up, isn't it?

I know, I know. So for those of you you who are interested, bandwidth is the number one resource that is really critical to what we do. So the space station has about 600 megabits of total bandwidth available and that's used for every purposes. Our bandwidth allocation goes through the ESA European Space Agency's allocation, and we have a top limit of about 10 meg. We tend to stream at 8 meg. To do a full 360 VR, you need a lot more. That's part of what's there. But talking about development further on, what we've got going on here is we already are on the bench doing designs on the next version. So don't just think about you know we've got six cameras, double up of everything. Think of like three times as many cameras for our next version. And, yes, steerable we did steerable before on the first hosted payload. We're going to be providing lots more opportunities there. We're also looking to be in other locations on the space station and then everyone hands up. If you've heard the story, the space station is going to be deorbited.

0:53:52 - Tariq Malik
That's my next question, yeah.

0:53:56 - Liam Kennedy
Yeah, so yeah, we're definitely. We have our sights on every other location you can imagine Everyone you know about, and including some others that you probably don't know about yet.

0:54:08 - Rod Pyle
So yeah, our plan is to be Excuse me, when you say every location, you mean like what Voyager Space is doing? You got it. What Vast?

0:54:15 - Tariq Malik
Yeah.

0:54:15 - Liam Kennedy
The moon right when you say every location you mean, like what Voyager Space is? Doing.

0:54:17 - Tariq Malik
You got it Vast. Yeah, the moon right. What about the moon?

0:54:20 - Liam Kennedy
Exactly, yeah, so just on a call with the NASA Artemis folks just last week, oh, wow yeah. We want to be everywhere, but we want to be everywhere for you, for the public. That's what it's all about. You know, there's an art and science available. With what we're doing, there's something that's very nourishing to humanity. Is what we're really all about. And yes, we need to make some money.

0:54:53 - Tariq Malik
You know, I guess you kind of talked a bit about what my probably my last question was going to be is that you know the name of, well of your invention obviously is ISS. Above the Ascend cameras are on the ISS. The ISS turns 25 in November of, you know, crewed spaceflight, NASA's put kind of an end date in the 2030s-ish. You know those cameras, unless you're going to send astronauts to go get them or a robotic arm to pack it away, are going to have a fiery grave, you know, in the south, in the center of the Pacific Ocean, and so I'm curious, like where you want to see the next S Zen camera.

Is it on a private space station? Is it on a free-flying spacecraft, like we see with SpaceX and Fram 2 launching in a few days into an orbit? We've never seen before with human eyes that sort of thing. What is that stepping stone like? Because it sounds like you have a very flexible payload box that you can put in different places.

0:55:58 - Liam Kennedy
Yeah, that's exactly the story of Scent. Our systems are not so expensive that we'll be crying ourselves to sleep when the space station I'll be crying myself to sleep every night when the station isn't there. Just let everyone know that. I'll be crying myself to sleep every night when the station isn't there. Just let everyone know that. But yeah, there's some things that I probably can't talk about in terms of how it might go. But yeah, everyone's in the same boat.

We have experiments on the space station. What happens? Do we just throw them away, or will there be an approach to transfer them from one station to another? That would be cool. That's one thing, but yeah, so it is special to be on a place where human beings are so undoubtedly that's what a big part of my driver is when humans are. We want to be the eyes of those humans in a way for the public, the eyes of those humans in a way for the public. So everywhere that can go is an important one. But we're also working. You know we had our first ETV A1. We're looking to future versions that will be in Leo and in other places. So, cislunar, you know we want to be located conveniently where there's ability to get lots of bandwidth. So, like Intuitive Machines has the, they have the contract for the lunar data network and that will be done through cislunar orbiting spacecraft for instance. So heads up Intuitive Machines. We're in contact with some folks.

0:57:34 - Rod Pyle
Just so it's made clear. Excuse me, when he says LEO, he means low Earth orbit, not R-LEO. No, yeah, we don't want to put cameras inside R-LEO. That's up to the doctors. Okay, Tariq sorry, go ahead.

0:57:45 - Tariq Malik
I have a suggestion. Maybe this is my last suggestion, but you know, you've got a pretty awesome camera system with live streaming, awesome camera system with live streaming, and you know, when it comes time, if it's at all physically possible, I think it would be really awesome to be able to, like you know, have the arm. You're live streaming the views of Earth from space. You know if there's a way to keep that powered, while you pluck it off, bartholomew, pop it on like a tug, on like a tug, and then it like jetties on to the next private space, but it's all live streaming at the same time. Uh, then you pop it on a private space station, get it on another tug, get it out to the cislunar space. You've got one camera system. That's the whole journey in one long arc. I think that would be that's amazing, right.

0:58:27 - Rod Pyle
It costs about 10 000 times as much as sending up a new camera I'm just.

0:58:31 - Tariq Malik
I'm just spitballing man. Okay, the guy started live streaming in the 90s and now he's beaming 4k from space, you know.

0:58:38 - Rod Pyle
So that's true that's a very good point, but well, yeah, you gotta dream it to win it right, you absolutely do.

0:58:46 - Liam Kennedy
I had no idea that this was, you know, pinch, pinch me, you know, is this real life, is what it comes down to, and, uh, you know. So I take exact everything you're doing, that the way that you are thinking that could go, Tariq, is a perfect, uh, perfect, way to think about all of this. So if we can do it, we'll do it.

0:59:07 - Rod Pyle
Great. That's probably the nicest thing anybody has said to Tarek in a couple of decades.

0:59:13 - Tariq Malik
That's right, because the only person I talked to was Rod, exactly, oh, you, poor devil.

0:59:19 - Rod Pyle
Hey, liam, I want to thank you for this. It's been a delight having you. It's been something we've wanted to do for quite a while and, you know, whenever you get your next upgrade, update, change, notion, whatever it is, please reach out to us, because we'd love to have you back. So I want to thank you and everybody for joining us for episode 154. We'd like to call the view from above. Liam, you mentioned Send TV already. Are there other places we should check out online to see what you're up to and buy your product?

0:59:52 - Liam Kennedy
Oh yeah. So ISS Above, go to issabovecom and follow Sen, obviously, on all the socials. You'll see the amazing content going up there every day and when you look at those clips, they pretty much have come from me sitting here in this very place commanding our payload to capture those views and make them available to you.

1:00:21 - Rod Pyle
Mission control at Tabacula. I like it, Tarek. Where can we find you orbiting these days?

1:00:27 - Tariq Malik
Well, you can find me at space.com. As always this weekend, I'm watching the solar eclipse. It's going to be great, Also playing some Fortnite.

1:00:34 - Liam Kennedy
It is.

1:00:34 - Tariq Malik
Fortnite OG, season 3, and there are not enough astronauts in it. But what are you gonna do? So you can find me there @spacetron plays on Youtube partial solar eclipse. It's not partial. All right, let's all marvel at the fact that the moon crosses in front of the star. That gives us life rod.

1:00:50 - Rod Pyle
Let's not diminish, I'm just saying I don't want people standing outside looking up saying where the heck is it? He said it was going to be an eclipse. Yeah, so If I could jump in here space station.

1:01:00 - Liam Kennedy
Can the space station see it? That's a question I'm asked. Is it going to be visible in our cameras? And unfortunately not. The space station is nowhere near the orbital sequence. It's not taking it there, but it could have been. And if so, we may have been able to catch the Earth shadow, the moon shadow, in the docking cam if we were going past Canada, because Canada is where it is the best place.

1:01:33 - Tariq Malik
Yeah, that's where the maximum partial is and I guess bits of Europe are going to be able to see some of the faces, but you've got to be high, high north Canada to see it.

1:01:43 - Rod Pyle
And just a reminder, because we always do it for people if you're going to look at the partial eclipse, the best way is to use a pinhole and project on the ground or go stand under a leafy tree. You'll see a hundred little partially eclipsed suns down on the ground, which is one of the coolest ways. If you're gonna look directly at it, you've got to use eclipse glasses that are sold by a reputable vendor, because anything else will ruin your eyes and take it from me. You don't want cataracts at the age of 45, which I had, and you can find me at pilebooks/com or at adastramagazines.com or running things behind the curtain at the National Space Society at nss.org. Now, remember, you can always drop us a line at twis@twit.tv. That's T-W-I-S@twit.tv we love hearing from you, and either Tarek or I probably me will answer your emails every single one, but Tarek does jump in every now and then when he's not crushed with work to do.

New episodes of this podcast publish every Friday in your favorite podcatcher. So make sure to subscribe, tell your friends, give us thumbs up, smile, send money, whatever you want to do. We appreciate it all and don't forget you know it's a lonely world without having you in Club Twit. It takes a lot of work for people besides Tarek and me the whole staff to send out these podcasts and get all these electrons moving your direction Well, or, in some cases, radio waves, whatever the case may be. So please consider joining Club Twit. For just $7 a month, it will get you access to the video stream of the show ad-free, and it will help keep us in business and bringing you these fine products and really cool people like Liam, because that's what we live to do. Finally, you can follow the Twit Tech Podcast Network at TWiT on Twitter and on Facebook and twit.tv on Instagram. Liam, thank you very much and, uh, godspeed to you and all your efforts. You're doing saintly work there. We appreciate it and, uh, we'll see everybody next week

1:03:42 - Leo Laporte
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