Writer: Jordan Sprogis
Editor: Lillian Castro
Reviewer: Cristian Lopez
Key Takeaways
- The splashdown of Artemis II drew in more than 3 million estimated viewers on NASA’s official channels alone.
- Major streaming platforms and broadcast networks simulcasted NASA’s feed without any reported outages.
- The only notable issue reported onboard was a Microsoft Outlook malfunction, which sounds about right.
Four astronauts splashed down into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego Friday after completing a 695,081-mile loop around the moon. Aside from the thousands of people who gathered in person, millions of people simultaneously watched it via streams from around the world.
Outside of NASA’s official channels on YouTube and Twitch, which drew about 3.5 million concurrent viewers during the touchdown on April 10 at around 7 p.m. ET, the broadcast was also available on Netflix, Prime, Peacock, HBO, Discovery+, Roku, and ABC.
That was several major streaming platforms simulcasting the same government feed, for free, on a Friday night.
The Artemis II launch on April 1 itself drew a combined peak of more than 10 million concurrent viewers across all platforms, making it the most-watched event in NASA history. NASA’s own YouTube channel peaked at 3.9 million viewers at the same time, with NASA en Español pulling hundreds of thousands and Fox News a similar number.
And yet, there were no widespread platform outages, no reported CDN failures.
NASA also ran a 24/7 continuous stream on YouTube throughout the mission. Two parallel feeds, actually: One a continuous live view from the spacecraft as it sailed toward the Moon, and the other an official mission broadcast with commentary and mission control audio.
Even during the quieter stretches, when the crew was asleep or there was little to see beyond the void, those streams still held around 40,000 to 45,000 concurrent viewers
And yet, for all the infrastructure that held up flawlessly across those cosmos, there was one notable exception.
Within a few hours of lifting off on April 1, commander Reid Wiseman flagged Mission Control with a complaint that almost everybody will recognize: Two instances of Microsoft Outlook open on his Surface Pro, neither working.
“I have two Microsoft Outlooks and neither one is working,” he said over comms.
The issue was resolved as Mission Control remotely accessed the laptop. Even thousands of miles heading into deep space, it’s funny how IT support still starts the same way.
