Under a cloak of secrecy, NASA has chosen a San Francisco-based internet company for a multimedia venture to produce reams of high-quality images about living and working in space, SPACE.com has learned.
The company, named Dreamtime, will be led by Bill Foster, an executive at AT&Ts broadband internet company Excite@Home.
The arrangement -- a first for NASA -- will be announced on Friday, June 2 at a banner news conference at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.
The deal will make Dreamtime responsible for producing an array of space-related content that now is produced and distributed by NASA. Both Dreamtime and NASA declined to comment.
Among Dreamtime's duties will be to produce film, video, still photography and internet programming for NASA, including coverage of crews aboard the International Space Station, sources close to the deal said.
"NASA TV will never be the same again," Daniel Tam, NASA Administrator Daniel Goldins assistant for commercialization, said of the deal at a recent meeting of the California Space and Technology Alliance. "Together we can tell a better story of what we do."
The arrangement comes amid a push by NASA to recruit private companies to invest in the space agency's missions. The contract is not expected to involve the transfer of any funds from NASA to Dreamtime.
Dreamtime's is the first commercial deal to be negotiated under the under the 1998 Commercial Space Act. The act was passed to foster commercial use of government space technology.
The plan calls for Dreamtime to provide a giant broadcast facility for the new space station that will beam down video and still pictures.
What Dreamtime gets is material for web and TV broadcasts, as well as documentary material for movies. Advertising revenue may also be a part of the scenario.
Goldin, the NASA administrator, and Associate Administrator for Spaceflight Joe Rothenberg are scheduled to appear at Friday's news conference at Ames.
Hollywood director James Cameron, of Titanic fame, is expected to add his support to the agreement during a broadcast conference call to Goldin during the conference.
Cameron has been busy prepping for his new 3-D Imax movie about the first piloted mission to Mars. He is also developing a five-hour "science-fact" miniseries for Fox-TV about people's obsession with the Red Planet.
The agreement with Dreamtime stems from NASA's call last December for private industry to bid for the rights to beam images to Earth from the new space station.
About 12 companies placed bids, including the Discovery Channel, Space Visions International and SPACE.com. Another bidder, SpaceHab, is planning its own orbiting video production facility.
The space agency chose Dreamtime in April. Since then, NASA has been tight-lipped about the details. Public affairs officials at Ames were even asked to sign non-disclosure statements about the winning bid, sources close to the deal said.
Dreamtime is to provide numerous services to NASA, including:
- High-definition television (HDTV) equipment for use aboard the $60 billion space station and space shuttles helping in its construction.
- Daily, weekly or monthly space-documentary programming via TV and the internet.
- Digitizing and cataloging a large portion of NASAs extensive archives, including 80 years worth of film, video and stills. The deal could cover more than 40,000 hours of video, 10 million still images and 10 million feet (3 million meters) of film.
For the most part, those products created under the partnership are to remain in the public domain.
However, NASA is expected to grant Dreamtime limited exclusive rights in cases where there is significant private investment involved.
That could include the development of a copyright-protected index system for all or a portion of the NASA archives, according to the agency.
Under the terms of the deal, Dreamtime will not receive a NASA contract or any NASA funds.
Instead, it will have to rely on the popularity of space-related imagery and products among its television, internet and other audiences to make money.
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