NASA app lands on Apple TV
The NASA app on Apple TV.
NASA has brought its mobile app to the fourth-generation Apple TV, offering space fans its massive trove of content for the big screen.
The app is already available for iOS, Android, and Fire OS devices, but previously the only way to view NASA's content on TV was by casting it to either Apple TV, Chromecast, or Fire TV.
Now Apple TV owners can simply install the tvOS app from the App Store. The NASA app offers a huge variety of NASA content, including images, live TV, on-demand video, and even NASA's rock station.
Users can also set up slideshows with over 15,000 images NASA has taken from space and earth, featuring galaxies, planets, interstellar clouds, and extreme weather on earth. The app includes the Earth as Art collection, which features 142 images of the Earth from space, with an interactive map marking out the location of each image.
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Useful for the big screen, the app provides access to high-definition live NASA TV, and on-demand access to over 12,000 videos from NASA other groups with NASA, such as Jet Propulsion Labs.
Space fans can stay on top of the latest launch information as well as get list of times and places they can spot the International Space Station or other NASA missions.
According to NASA, the app has been download 17 million times across all platforms. The Apple TV is meant to expand the more solitary mobile experience to a platform better suited to sharing its content with the family.
Apple overhauled Apple TV last year, introducing tvOS and the App Store on the device for developers to distribute their apps for the platform. The company earlier this week added support for a number of new channels for the US market, which users can search for through Siri and the Search app. These included A&E, History, Lifetime, Cooking Channel, DIY, Food Network, Travel Channel FYI, and HGTV.
tvOS 10, due out later this year, introduces dark mode, single sign-on, and improved Siri search capabilities, and HomeKit integration.