NASA Third Rock Radio Station Appeals To A Young, Human Audience

NASA has finally found a way to speak to humans -- a music program with a trendy name. The space agency launched a radio station, in partnership with RFC Media, in mid-December called Third Rock, that knows who its audience is. Case in point:

"America's Space Station, where listeners will hear about great new artists way before their friends hear of them," the press release reads.

There you have it. Our target audience falls somewhere in the age group where finding out about music before your friends still seems awfully important. And a month into its launch, they're building up a steady audience, with more than 5,000 likes on Facebook.

When we tuned in, we got a mix of Jon Fratelli, stellastarr, Broken Bells, Gomez, Blink 182 and even rediscovered a great song we'd forgotten all about (Codeine Velvet Club's "Hollywood," anyone?) If we don't hear spacey French duo Air at some point though, we're requesting a request line.

But music isn't all this station offers. "NASA features and news items are embedded throughout the programming alongside greetings by celebrity artists," the press release expands.

Our Third Rock stream was interrupted by some strategic messages prefaced by the tagline, "smart is sexy!" Cue the young-sounding girl who announces, "At any given time, there are 1,800 thunderstorms happening around the world." Oh you sneaky NASA scientists! You made me learn!

To tune into our space DJs, go here, or download the NASA app.

Comments

[firewired]

11:51 AM on 01/15/2012

Absolutely LOVE IT! Great idea!!

[CabCurious]

08:34 PM on 01/13/2012

I've listened to this station a few times.

It's not trendy.

It's a lot of really horrible indie rock. I listened to an hour of whine, nasal, indie rock like "Offstring" and finally had to turn it off. It's just pop indie crud.

Very disappointing.

[James P Scott]

06:46 PM on 01/13/2012

spacestation or mission control on somafm are much better.

[Item9]

06:07 PM on 01/13/2012

Why?

[Evgeney Knyazhev]

05:31 PM on 01/13/2012

Public letter:
Dear Friends.

No too big secret that NASA has gotten toughest question to fund future & current projects. I’d like to offer you game-changing strategy: One & First among the Key Factors is to become financially independent, space tourism has really great potential to be first having extra incomes, but common mistake of start-ups like SpaceX is the way to excite customers. Ticket to Space is too expensive even for far not poor personas, but fortunately this obstacle can be broken through with lottery schemes to sell tickets + that way makes possible to get many times more income to advance than Just to search wealthy ones.

Aforesaid text is only smallest part of the strategy to turn Space Industry from ugly duck to blossoming Swan.

My the best wishes.

P. S.

+ one wonderful & useful moment must be mentioned: the more NASA will be self-funded, the more money from government will be given to NASA.

[Cheri Trigg]

11:42 AM on 01/13/2012

I kinda think NASA's 3rd Rock is pretty Far Out!

[cameron d]

11:25 AM on 01/13/2012

Well the playlist doesn't really seem all that adventurous. You'd think NASA would have made that a priority.

[CabCurious]

08:35 PM on 01/13/2012

I agree.

This better not be using taxpayer money. It's a generic indie rock station. Bad, at that.

[uhavenoface]

09:26 PM on 01/13/2012

it is part of nasa's job to disseminate its scientific findings to the public. this is in their mission statement, was defined by congress at its inception, and remains one of its biggest priorities. in other words, they are required, by law, to do these sorts of things (and that's a good thing; it's why we have access to all those awesome hubble pictures).

thankfully mass media (and the occasionally generous celebrity voiceover) makes this pretty cheap to do. i mean, this is century-old technology; simply running one radio station costs next to nothing. every public university in the country has a radio station. your tax dollars have been funding those for a really long time. what's wrong with nasa having one?