VIDEOS: Nye & Teens in Space as Curiosity Lands in Hi-Def!

I've got a couple of video for you. One is designed for kids, but is great fun and classic Science Guy stuff for all ages. The other will astound you.

Our boss, Bill Nye, flew to London to host a live presentation from the YouTube Space Lab channel. It was a pretty amazing video accomplishment, with Bill serving as the nexus of a conversation with three brilliant teens, several other Earthbound participants communicating via Google Hangout technology, a lot of other kids from around the world, and one very lucky astronaut on the International Space Station. You have to see an enthusiastic Sunita Williams letting her hand mic float free while she manipulates the experiments proposed by the teens.

That was the whole point, by the way. As Bill explains in this week's edition of Planetary Radio, thousands of young people submitted their ideas for experiments to conduct on the ISS. The lucky winners were Dorothy Chen and Sara Ma of Michigan with their proposal involving bacteria, and Amr Mohamed of Alexandria, Egypt for his test of a jumping spider's ability to adapt its hunting skills to microgravity. 

It's great TV, great education, and great inspiration. As I write this, the live show and archived recording have been viewed more than 1.6 million times. You can watch it right here.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/KCQVXEgSbrk

Then there's this stunning result of four intense weeks at his workstation by Bard Canning. You've seen the descent video from Curiosity, right? The footage released by NASA of the Mars Science Laboratory's landing was already eye-popping, but wait till you see (and hear) how Bard has turned it into a 30 frame per second, HD masterpiece! Everyone here at the Society has been blown away, and I think you will be, too. Congratulations, Bard!

https://www.youtube.com/embed/Esj5juUzhpU