Rocket over the moon at TV Craft award nomination

The groundbreaking Channel 4 series, which aired earlier this month, was made in collaboration with Nasa, taking viewers into space with astronauts on the International Space Station.

Sheffield-based Rocket developed the programme‘s website, which included an Astronaut Test and a micro gravity game.

It also featured an interactive documentary of Commander Chris Hadfield’s first ever space walk, with specially recorded narration and a distance tracker which showed how far the International Space Station was from the viewer’s location on Earth.

The agency said that even NASA was impressed and recently gave the project a Group Achievement Award for “outstanding production and execution of the first ever live documentary from the ISS”.

“Live from Space was an incredibly exciting project for us and we’re thrilled with this Bafta nomination,” said Rocket‘s managing director Andy Barratt.

“We had the opportunity to flex our creative muscles and come up with a whole range of engaging content to work alongside the series – bringing viewers closer to the action and the reality of life on the ISS.”

Over the three weeks the Live from Space site was active, it received over 400,000 visits and 282,000 unique visitors.

247,000 people used the tracker to follow the ISS’ journey around the globe and over 100,000 people completed the Astronaut Test. Over 870,000 balls were fired in the Earth versus Astronauts game by viewers, celebrities and NASA astronauts.

Rocket said its prestigious nomination follows the agency’s Gold Lovie Award and Royal Television Society Second Screen Award for the same project.

The British Academy Television Craft Awards recognise the best behind-the-scenes talent in British television.

The website can still be visited at http://channel4.com/space