The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is always looking for new exciting ways to share their passion and excitement for space research. The NASA Twitch channel went live at the start of this month to live broadcast a spacewalk outside the International Space Station.
The stream garnered enough watch time to become NASA’s most-watched stream of the year on Twitch, and the broadcast was live for 9 hours. Take a look at some of the viewership statistics for NASA’s first spacewalk live stream of 2023.
The live stream in the vacuum of space received 53.5K Hours Watched, as enthusiasts and curious viewers enjoyed watching the astronauts complete their assignment. The stream was the most-watched NASA stream of 2023, receiving just under 3K more Hours Watched than their SpaceX Crew-6 launch stream in March.
Although it was their most-watched stream of the year, it was not the most popular. The broadcast outside of the International Space Station reached 7.2K Peak Viewers, much fewer than the SpaceX Crew-6 launch, which received 30.2K PV. The spacewalk stream benefitted from being 9 hours long, making it the third-longest NASA broadcast on Twitch ever.
Spacewalk streams are usually some of NASA’s most popular content, and in 2021 a similar live stream of a spacewalk outside the ISS received 34.7K Peak Viewers and recorded over 200K Hours Watched. NASA has proven before that spacewalks have an audience to generate hundreds of thousands of hours of watch time, but without announcing and advertising these streams in advance, it seems difficult to generate this audience so spontaneously.
You know the drill! @LunarLoral uses the Pistol Grip Tool, or PGT, on a solar array joint while @AstroJaws opens the thermal cover on the @Space_Station to get a tool bag in this split-screen view from today's spacewalk. pic.twitter.com/cGpflt9c3m
— NASA (@NASA) November 1, 2023
The spacewalk was completed by NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara, who were outside the station on their mission for almost 7 hours. The astronauts were able to complete one of two major objectives, and the spacewalk almost went perfectly.
The astronauts did lose track of a tool bag which floated off into the emptiness of space, and NASA mission control managed to track and analyse the trajectory of the bag. NASA are not worried about the bag recontacting the station and causing any issues, so they’re happy to let it float out into the void.
The Peak Viewers figure for the recent spacewalk doesn’t hold a candle to NASA’s most popular broadcasts. At the end of May 2020, NASA hosted their second stream of them and SpaceX launching astronauts into space. The stream reached a peak of 392.9K concurrent viewers as the rocket took off from the ground and began its journey. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carried two NASA astronauts to the ISS.
NASA’s coverage of the red planet was also largely popular, and their live demo and Q&A for the Mars Rover landing reached 178.1K Peak Viewers. However, all of these streams fall short of the LVM3-M4 launch by the ISRO. The Indian Space Research Organisation reached 1.8M Peak Viewers during its launch earlier this year and it was the most popular space-related stream ever on Twitch.
NASA’s next live stream is scheduled for November 9, covering a spacecraft of supplies, research, and hardware arriving at the ISS. In collaboration with SpaceX, NASA is launching the 29th resupply mission to the ISS, which is scheduled to arrive shortly before 12pm EST. Join NASA’s Twitch stream at 10.15am EST, when their coverage of the resupply will commence.
