Bonus: Happy Holidays from NASA!

01NASA doesn't do things small.

02Enthusiasm is a very common trait among all of us here.

03When you take something like the Webb Telescope, and it opens its eyes for the first time, and offers us an entirely new view of the universe around us, you can't help but celebrate.

04And that celebration is not exclusive to NASA.

05It is not exclusive even just to the partners with NASA on the mission.

06It's a celebration that belongs to every person.

07This is NASA's Curious Universe.

08Our universe is a wild and wonderful place.

09I'm your host, Patti Boyd, and in this podcast, NASA is your tour guide.

10Welcome to another bonus episode.

11We like to share these episodes between seasons while we're working on what's to come.

12Season five is well underway and will debut in early 2023.

13In the meantime, we're preparing not only for the show, but for the end of the year and the holiday season.

14So while we're stuffing turkeys and stringing lights, we wanted to take this opportunity to give you some updates on topics we've explored in the past, and take a look at the lighter side of NASA.

15How does NASA celebrate the holidays?

16The traditional ones and maybe some you haven't yet heard of.

17I'm Rob Garner, the news chief in the Office of Communications at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

18My job entails making sure that all of the important stuff that NASA's doing gets out to the people who need to know what's going on.

19Baked into the NASA charter is the notion that what NASA does is to be communicated to the broadest practicable audience, and that's where I and my colleagues come in.

20Rob is a fan of fun and nerdy NASA history.

21He also leads one of NASA's communications teams, which works to make science relatable.

22This team not only publishes articles, videos, and podcast episodes, but also joins in on social media conversations and celebrations to get the NASA message out there.

23So Rob's taken part in a lot of holidays, from sinister Halloween posts to heart-shaped Valentine's nebulae.

24Rob and his team are always looking for new ways to celebrate science.

25Here at NASA, we partake in quite a few non-traditional holidays, from Star Wars May the 4th to International Observe the Moon Night and more.

26Another holiday that might not surprise you to learn has a number of NASA-based aficionados would be Pi Day, March 14th, 3-1-4.

27Back in 2008, one of the video producers just decided on a lark to start a Pi Day celebration.

28So at lunch on the appointed day, a handful of us had procured pies and brought them in, and over lunch just ate these pies.

29Goodness, it's snowballed since then.

30It's been an annual tradition in our midst now for many years.

31It just continued to grow and grow and grow.

32I think 2019 was the last observed Pi Day.

33I think there was something like 70 or more submissions, pies and torts and quiches and pizzas of every conceivable variety.

34Not only does NASA bring the science element with Pi, 3.14 dot dot dot, but employees couldn't help but throw some of their work into their creations, modeling their entries after exciting NASA missions and spacecraft.

35There have been things like James Webb Space Telescope, Pimary Mirror, Pi was one.

36There was an Opiris-Rex, Osiris-Rex being the asteroid sample return mission.

37My own contribution, I forget what year it was, but I made a very disastrous Klingon rocag blood pie that just spilled raspberry juices all over the table.

38That did not place well.

39Holidays, besides being a good reason to eat pie, bring people together.

40They let us pause and celebrate.

41But for astronauts far from Earth on the International Space Station, they can be challenging.

42So we do our best to make them extra special.

43Astronauts may not get to spend the time with their families in person, but they do get some special treats.

44From Hanukkah socks and Santa hats, to freeze-wrapped turkeys and New Year's harmonicas, our explorers in space get a little piece of home brought up for different celebrations.

45And as you may remember from our Day in Space episode, birthdays on station usually involve some singing.

46Happy birthday to you!

47Happy birthday to Drew and NMX-61!

48Happy birthday to Drew!

49For astronaut Shannon Walker, neither of her missions included a birthday celebration on the International Space Station, but she did get to take in a few out-of-this-world celebrations.

50I did not get to celebrate a birthday.

51You know, I went just around it.

52But I did a lot of holidays.

53I got Thanksgiving up there twice.

54And then this last flight I got to celebrate Christmas twice because we celebrate Christmas on December 25th in the U.S.

55And so, of course, we're going to celebrate that.

56The Russian cosmonauts go with the Russian Orthodox calendar and church, and so they celebrate Christmas later.

57So we got to have another Christmas celebration.

58So that was really special, too.

59NASA loves a celebration, and we have a lot to celebrate.

60Between mission milestones and important moments in history, to broader national and international holidays, communicators across the agency work to spread the joy and fun of NASA's work.

61There's a big team focused on getting NASA's word out, and engaging with the public to spread information, fun, and often some holiday cheer.

62Hi, my name is Stephanie L.

63Smith, and I am the Social Media Manager at NASA Headquarters.

64Social media is all about conversations.

65It's about talking and listening and responding.

66Nobody really wants to hang out with someone at a party who only talks about themselves, and then you ask them a question and they walk away.

67Same thing with social media.

68We don't just show up and tell people things about America's space program.

69We listen to what they have to say, we see what they're excited about, we see what they're confused by, and we stick around for the rest of the conversation.

70With social media, NASA can join in on fun conversations online, and hopefully add a bit of science or wonder to people's holiday plans.

71Take Halloween, for example.

72Hashtag Halloween is always going to trend.

73People are always going to want to share pictures of their costumes.

74So one thing that we like to do is invite people to show us their space-themed costumes, whether it was them, their kids, their friends.

75But maybe we use it as a chance to share other resources.

76So if they're young children, we might be able to share coloring pages or activities.

77We have a website called NASA Space Place that has lots of resources for young children.

78If the kid is really excited about the James Webb Space Telescope or about the Orion capsule, we can share those resources with parents and caregivers and help build a stronger relationship between the public and our missions.

79Joining these holiday conversations is an opportunity to bring some beauty, awe, and wonder, some perspective to people's lives.

80It's fun.

81It's just fun.

82It's fun, and it's a chance to join a global conversation and remind people that NASA has a sense of humor, that NASA is made of people.

83We might be the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, but we're not robots.

84And we like joining conversations.

85We like talking about what we do.

86If we have a chance to do that on a holiday like Valentine's Day by sharing a heart-shaped crater or a rose-shaped nebula, fantastic.

87NASA's workforce might be made of people, but there are a lot of robots around here, too.

88And some of our robots are on social media, joining conversations and giving updates.

89Stephanie had the chance to portray one of the Mars rovers on Twitter and ring in Thanksgiving as the Curiosity rover with people across the country.

90One of the best parts of my job was getting to portray the Curiosity rover on Twitter, at Mars Curiosity.

91We did the account, and still do, in the first person.

92So Curiosity is there to tell you what she did at work today.

93Work just happens to be on Mars.

94The very first Thanksgiving that I worked as Curiosity was marvelous.

95We got well wishes from around the country, from other people who were, you know, traveling or might have been alone on the holidays.

96They related to Curiosity being far from home, on her own, on the road.

97And I like to say that the rover is alone, but she's not lonely.

98Having the connection of social media and the conversations there is an important point of connection.

99And getting to portray that character made me feel connected to people far and wide.

100Another important holiday for the Mars Curiosity rover was its first anniversary on the red planet.

101Curiosity spent a year collecting important information about Mars.

102But our scientists and engineers snuck a bit of fun in there, too.

103August 5th, 2013, so the one-year land-iversary for the rover on the red planet.

104Some of the team members on the SAM instrument, that's Sample Analysis at Mars, found that the instrument makes tones and that they could program it to play Happy Birthday.

105The Happy Birthday song was an opportunity to celebrate with NASA fans around the world and to commemorate the huge accomplishment of doing science on another planet.

106Our mission milestones are worth celebrating in their own right.

107But in 2021, we were able to experience a holiday and an incredible step in understanding our universe on the same day.

108December 25th, 2021, was an extra special Christmas morning for space fans around the world.

109At 7.20 a.m.

110Eastern Time, an Ariane 5 rocket launched off the pad in Kuru, French Guiana, sending the James Webb Space Telescope onto its long-awaited journey to space.

111For everyone here at NASA, it was an extra special treat to behold.

112For Rob, it was an opportunity for some quiet celebration with his family.

113My son was just over a year old that Christmas morning.

114He was not a late sleeper then, still isn't.

115And so, for us at least, we were up anyway that morning, regardless of the fact that the Webb Telescope was launching.

116We had our Christmas tree behind us, and I'm sitting there in the dark, watching the web stream of the launch and the deployment.

117I had the Christmas tree lights reflecting off the screen, and then the glow of the monitor.

118That was the only light in the whole house for those first couple of hours, before the rest of the home woke up to come down and open gifts.

119But what a gift to have gotten.

120And now we have an indelibly, inextricably linked NASA milestone that you can bet is going to be mentioned for Christmas's hence to come.

121Whether we're bringing people together to watch a rocket launch, or observe a solar eclipse, providing the tools and the fun to learn about our universe is one of the best parts of the job.

122Back in 2017, when we had the total solar eclipse that a vast percentage of North America was a witness to.

123I remember we had, at the visitor center, crowds and crowds of people.

124Everybody had their solar eclipse viewing approved safety glasses.

125There were people who had brought their own pinhole projectors to observe the eclipse.

126We had a couple of solar observing stations, telescopes of our own.

127It's not every day that what's going on in space is something that someone has the ability to observe it on their own.

128I remember us on the loudspeakers counting down, oh, it's such and such minutes until totality.

129It's just great to see so many people of so many backgrounds coming together for observing something like that.

130There were families here with their young kids.

131There were teenagers.

132It's a perfect example of the kind of thing like, yes, look, you don't have to be a doctoral student.

133You can participate in these kinds of celestial events and still take away something very awe-inspiring from it.

134Whenever we can connect the work that we're doing at NASA on behalf of people, all people, to something that you can go out and see for yourself, it makes the job that much easier to drive home what we're doing and why it's important.

135When we get a leg up from a magnificent planetary alignment, thanks, universe.

136We owe you one for that.

137In case you couldn't tell by this point in our episode, we here at NASA look for any occasion to bring people together, virtually or in person.

138Every fall, we encourage stargazers across the world to join us in International Observe the Moon Night, a yearly event to appreciate our closest celestial neighbor.

139In the spring, we encourage people to join a Pi Day celebration.

140And with every major mission milestone, we like to remind people that these celebrations aren't just for scientists, they're for everyone.

141Whether it's Pi Day, whether it's International Observe the Moon Night, no matter what it is, you don't need to be a scientist to partake in it.

142Space exploration, it's for all of us.

143We don't send missions out into space just to send them out into space.

144We do it because there's an ingrained aspect of the human condition to explore, to seek out that which is not known, and just to learn.

145It's only natural that, whether it's a social media holiday or an event that brings people closer to each other to discuss science or not, building those human connections is what it takes to really make meaningful the overall work that NASA does.

146NASA is your space agency.

147We want to hear from you.

148We want to know what you're excited about, what you're curious about.

149We are on this journey of exploration together.

150Everyone's invited.

151And we'll see you online.

152Before we leave you to celebrate the holidays, we wanted to provide you some updates from past seasons episodes.

153The James Webb Space Telescope team continues to release beautiful images and incredible findings.

154Not only have we seen galaxies in new detail, we already know more about exoplanets.

155Plus, we saw the rings of Neptune in ways we never have before.

156You can see all these images and more at webtelescope.org.

157You might have also heard about the DART impact, an exciting event where we sent a spacecraft into an asteroid.

158If you want to hear more about this exciting achievement, check out nasa.gov.dart.

159And finally, on November 16th of this year, 2022, the Artemis I mission launched off the pad at Kennedy on its way to the Moon.

160You can hear about the incredible SLS rocket that is taking us to the Moon and beyond in our Season 3 episode, Rocket Assembly Required.

161We have many more exciting adventures to come.

162So keep an eye and an ear out for early 2023, when we'll start releasing the next season of NASA's Curious Universe.

163We'll explore gravitational waves, track wildfires, and visit an Australian rocket launch site.

164Until then, stay curious, and happy holidays from all of us here at NASA!

165This is NASA's Curious Universe.

166This episode was written and produced by Christina Dana.

167Our executive producer is Katie Konins.

168The Curious Universe team includes Maddie Arnold and Michaela Sosby, with support from Christian Elliott.

169Our extra special holiday theme song was composed by Matt Russo and Andrew Santaguida of System Sounds.

170If you liked this episode, please let us know by leaving us a review, tweeting about the show, and tagging at NASA, or sharing NASA's Curious Universe with a friend.

171Still curious about NASA?

172You can send us questions about this episode or a previous one, and we'll try to track down the answers.

173You can email a voice recording or send a written note to NASA-CuriousUniverse at mail.nasa.gov.

174Go to nasa.gov slash curiousuniverse for more information.

175Patty, do you have any NASA holiday traditions?

176I have several NASA-themed Christmas ornaments that are hanging on the Christmas tree every year.

177I've also got a whole bunch of Star Trek ornaments on my tree.

178And it's been really cool to see how science fiction has been walking hand-in-hand with science fact through all these decades.

179I've also got a whole bunch of kids.

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