Skip to footer

Astronauts to launch for ISS, seen live from Times Square

 NASA has announced that it will broadcast the next launch to the International Space Station live on Times Square's enormous Toshiba screen.

|
Diane Bondareff/AP
The next launch to the Space Station will be broadcast live on Times Square's bright and enormous Toshiba screen.

Looking for a space experience stippled with glitz and glitter, but lack the $75,000 needed to luxuriate aboard World Views’ planned mid-stratosphere-skimming capsule? Want to experience the thrill of a rocket blastoff, but missing the $250,000 to purchase a seat on Virgin Galactic’s coming sound-barrier-smashing spacecraft?

Well, consider this an alternative, free of charge: NASA has announced that it will broadcast the next launch to the International Space Station live on Times Square's enormous and bright Toshiba screen, just under the New Year’s Eve ball.

The launch is scheduled for Wednesday at 11:14 p.m. EST, but the screening will last from 10:15 p.m. to 11:45 p.m. The upcoming viewing will come about two months after space fans congregated in LED-lit Times Square to watch the launch of the lunar explorer LADEE mission, and more than a year after enthusiasts gathered there to see the Curiosity rover blast off toward Mars.

This time, NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio, Russian astronaut Mikhail Tyurin, and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata will launch on the big screen from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstanin to the ISS. The team will join six astronauts already at the space station.

"The space station serves as a unique laboratory for researchers around the world, home to astronauts from multiple countries, and was built with international cooperation, so it's fitting to show the launch of the next crew in the most cosmopolitan city in the United States," said William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for human exploration and operations, in a NASA statement.

The trio will be riding in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, a detail that has rankled NASA and furnished a three-way tussle between private spaceflight companies for a NASA contract to replace Russia for the Earth to ISS transport job. 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Astronauts to launch for ISS, seen live from Times Square
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2013/1104/Astronauts-to-launch-for-ISS-seen-live-from-Times-Square
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe