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« Podcast Quicky: Formula One Podcast | Main | Sony Ericsson Intros Entry-Level Walkman Phone »NASA Astronaut Steve Robinson First Podcaster From SpaceAugust 08, 2005NASA has announced that STS-114 Mission Specialist Steve Robinson has transmitted the first "podcast" from space. The recording was made on the Space Shuttle Discovery, in orbit over Indonesia. No podcast newsfeed is available at this time, but NASA has published an MP3 download.
Above photo: Podcaster and Mission Specialist Steve Robinson aboard the International Space Station prior to Shuttle undocking. NASA has helped pioneer podcasting, jumping in early with its popular science@nasa podcast. Podcast Transcript: "Hello, this is Mission Specialist Number 2 Steve Robinson from the Space Shuttle Discovery. We're high in orbit on our last day of orbit. Tomorrow we come home. I'm currently talking to you just off the southeast tip of Indonesia in the daylight and moving on towards night. It's been a fantastic mission up here, absolutely amazing. Some of the hardest work that any of us have ever done. We haven't had a whole lot of sleep, and we've been extremely busy and really happy. The mission has been a test flight. We've tried lots of new things on this mission, from inspecting the Space Shuttle in space using all kinds of robot arms and sensors, to doing experimental spacewalks, which have also gone very, very well, and it's been very gratifying to learn so much about our orbiter. We've had some surprises. We sure didn't expect that big piece of foam to come off of the tank. Fortunately it missed us. We didn't expect to go outside and get to remove gap fillers from the belly of the orbiter. That was, I would have to say, the most fantastic experience of my life. Just incredible to be way out there on the end of that arm all by myself and see no evidence of humans anywhere. Just me and the Space Station and the Space Shuttle from a view that neither I nor anybody else has ever seen, and watch the sun come up over the bottom of the Space Shuttle, and get to sort of drink in that big view. I'll never forget it, and I'll never be able to describe it adequately, I'm sure. But I feel very fortunate to have been able to get a chance to do that. And also very glad that it worked! We were able to do, we were ready to do more than just pull on the gap fillers. We were ready to actually cut it out if we had to. We were going to get those gap fillers out no matter what! Turns out to be, have been a very easy job. The rest of the crewmembers, the rest of the crewmembers -- Eileen and Jim and Soichi and Andy and Wendy and Charlie -- we've had a really good time together. You know, we've trained together for a long time, several years. And we really enjoy each other's company. And it's a really rare thing to be with this, a group of people who are as diverse as we are. Everybody with different and complementary talents and all with a really great sense of humor. So we've laughed a lot, we've worked really hard, and we've learned a lot from each other. It's been really a fantastic experience. Now it's time to go home. I think some people are ready to go home -- I know I'm not. I would rather stay on the Space Station with Sergei and John and experience this strange, incredible life floating in Earth, above the Earth. At any rate, I will close ... At any rate I will close this very brief first podcast from space with a greeting to all Earthlings and a thank you for your interest and support. Whether you support the space program or not, you're learning from it. You're learning from it the very moment you hear this and think about what we're doing. And I think that learning is what looking over the horizon is all about, and don't forget that learning can be exciting and fun, too, because that's certainly what this mission has been all about. So signing off from the Space Shuttle Discovery, this is Steve Robinson, and hope to talk to you soon." CommentsHere's the official NASA page about it: http://www1.nasa.gov/returntoflight/crew/robinson_podcast.html I think you guys should in addition to posting the story, post a links to the sites/pages concerning the news you post, several other news organizations do this and I think you should strongly consider doing it as well. Posted by: celerityfm celerityfm You raise an important issue, one that we've thought about a lot. We do our best to both respect copyright and give credit to sources. We provide links when it is useful to the reader and to provide attribution. Taking a few examples from the last day or so: Blog-like items When we do a blog-style entry, quoting or commenting on another source, we will link to the source, because it provides value to the reader and gives credit (and traffic) to the source quoted. We will try to provide enough of a quote to let readers know whether or not they want to follow the link to the source and read more. This is fair use of copyrighted material. A recent example is the story "Apple Using Podcasting to Fight Satellite Radio", http://www.podcastingnews.com/archives/2005/08/apple_using_pod.html. We thought that the blog posting was well-written and would be of interest to podcasters, so we provided enough quote to let you know what the article is about, and a link so you can find out more. Internal Reporting When we create stories through our own reporting, we provide links when they will be useful to readers. An recent example is Podcast Quicky: Formula One Podcast: http://www.podcastingnews.com/archives/2005/08/podcast_quicky_11.html. This was based off of an email interview with a podcaster. In this case, we provided a link to the podcaster's site, so people could find out more about the podcast, and a link to our page that shows the details on the podcast. Press Releases Some of our information is based on information provided by companies through press releases or other method. In this situation we will often edit or rewrite the information to remove "hype" and to try to make the information relevant to our readers. Because press releases are provided for publication, we put links in the article when it is useful to the reader. An example is the article on the i-deck system: There wouldn't be any benefit for most readers for us to link to the i-deck press release. The article has the same info, but with the focus on providing information, rather than trying to sell you something. In this case, we provided a link to the i-deck site, instead, so people could look for more information if they wanted to. Public Domain Information In the case of the NASA story, http://www.podcastingnews.com/archives/2005/08/nasa_astronaut.html, it was based on a public-domain press release. (Publications of Federal agencies are generally public domain when published). In a situation like this, we provide links when it's useful to the reader. In this article, we provided a link to NASA, a link to the actual MP3 file, and a link to the details on science@nasa. We did not provide a link to the web page we got the transcript from, because it doesn't provide any additional information for the reader. I hope that this helps makes sense of how we work. If you have any suggestions or feedback, please contact us. There's a feedback link at the top right of just about every page of the Podcasting News site! Posted by: jlewin Thanks for the reply! Posted by: celerityfm The article is incorrect. This wasn't a podcast. Podcasts require an RSS feed by definition. NASA simply put an MP3 file up on their Web site; that's been done before. There's no "first" here. Posted by: Steve Eley Steve Note that that the first time we mention what NASA has done, we use the term "podcast" in quotes, and follow that up with a note that "No podcast newsfeed is available at this time". When other sources use the term "podcast" in ways that don't meet our idea of what a podcast is, we try to make that clear, as we did in this instance. That said, there is no official definition of what a podcast is, and there is no official podcast specification. Because of this, the popular usage of the term "podcast" is frequently much looser than podcasters would like. What people consider a podcast appears to be changing over time, too, so we try to report on how the concept is used, rather than to editorialize on it, within news items. I hope this helps! Posted by: jlewin Post a comment |
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