Super Bowl 2018: Even Astronauts Are Watching the Big Game
The big screen is up on the @Space_Station, and we are ready for the Big Game. Good luck to the @Patriots and @Eagles. #SuperBowl pic.twitter.com/116mr59VL5
— Joseph M. Acaba (@AstroAcaba) February 4, 2018
It's official: Super Bowl LII is truly out of this world. That's because even astronauts in space are watching the big game.
NASA astronaut Joe Acaba on the International Space Station posted a photo on Twitter tonight (Feb. 4) showing the big game on the orbiting laboratory's big projection screen, which allows astronauts to watch films and TV shows using a high-definition projector. The only question left is who are the astronauts rooting for in the football championship: The Philadelphia Eagles or the New England Patriots?
"The big screen is up on the @Space_Station, and we are ready for the Big Game," Acaba wrote on Twitter. "Good luck to the @Patriots and @Eagles. #SuperBowl" [How to Tailgate Like an Astronaut]
Acaba is one of six crewmembers of the International Space Station (which coincidentally is the size of a U.S. football field from end to end). Also on board are NASA astronauts Mark Vande Hei and Scott Tingle; Russian cosmonauts Alexander Misurkin and Anton Shkaplerov; and Japanese astronaut Norishige Kanai.
Watching the Super Bowl means a really late night for the space station crew, which typically works on a schedule based on Greenwich Mean Time. Tthe kickoff for tonight's game was at 6:30 p.m. EST. That's 2330 GMT, or 11:30 p.m. for the station crew!
This isn't the first time the astronauts have caught a major entertainment event in space. In December, the space station crewmembers watched "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" in space to see the latest adventure from a galaxy far, far away.
Past astronaut crews have also followed the big game from space. In 2017, when the Super Bowl took place in Houston, NASA participated in a whole series of space and football events for the game, including making one of the longest football passes of all time in space (564,664 yards, or 516,328 meters).
Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
