As our astronauts orbit nearly 250 miles above the earth they are by necessity cut off from much of what we enjoy down here on this blue marble. But this year the Super Bowl isn’t going to be one of those things. This year the crew will be able to watch the game live and in real time.
According to Tech Times, the game will be beamed right into the bowels of the International Space Station (ISS) so the crew can enjoy the game just like the rest of us.
“Crew will be able to watch in real time; it will be sent up as usual for live events from Mission Control Houston,” NASA spokesman Dan Huot told Space.com.
Huot also noted that Sunday is “a nominal off-duty Sunday for the entire crew, so no additional tasks for them aside from exercise.”
Also like the rest of us, once game day is over on Monday the crew of the ISS will go right back to work and, in their case, will return to their experiments and other duties.
Still, the crew aren’t forced to miss all the entertainment down here on Earth. They were given special permission to watch the new Star Wars movie during its opening week and they are allowed to request specific shows if they like. The ISS crew also watched last year’s Super Bowl.
Astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko are about a month away from the end of their one-year stint and are soon to return home. But American Tim Kopra, British astronaut Tim Peake, and cosmonauts Yuri Malenchenko and Sergey Volkov are working beside the two short timers and have some time still to go before they will be able to return.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com
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