From Liftoff to Kickoff: Space Technology in the NFL
This is part three of a five-part series looking at the many ways the space program has influenced the National Football League, and helped make it the success the game is today.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- The bratwursts are grilled, the sauerkraut is simmering and the beverages are chilled. You fall into the couch, grab the remote and -- thanks to a few rockets launched from the Cape and elsewhere -- the big game reliably appears on your television.

In order to get coverage of the game from the stadium to your living room, broadcast professionals have to assemble a collection of technology -- much of it with a space-based pedigree -- that rivals the electronics on hand at any Best Buy or Radio Shack.

"We build a small little city at a sporting event, made up of production trucks, uplink trucks and a lot of other infrastructure that you have to bring with you to cover a game," said Jim Lewis, general manager of Communications Concepts, Inc., a Cape Canaveral-based television production house with experience covering regional sporting events, as well as commercial launches from the Cape.

The TV signal starts with a camera that captures the scene on the field -- say, Minnesota Viking Randy Moss catching a touchdown pass from quarterback Daunte Culpepper.

That wondrous scene of purple pride is captured by a television camera equipped with Charge Coupled Device (CCD) technology, the same technology that makes consumer digital cameras possible.

CCD's were first demonstrated by the Bell Laboratories in 1969 and then improved with NASA funding for eventual use on the Hubble Space Telescope and the Galileo probe to Jupiter. Military spending on spy satellites equipped with CCD cameras also helped advance the technology.

Lewis said that depending on the importance of the game and the size of the production budget, the number of cameras available can vary, but an average number for an NFL game is about 10. This gives the director a good selection of views on the field, along the sidelines and in the stands.

The camera views are fed into a production truck, where the director and other creative folks mix the pictures and sounds, add graphics and otherwise produce the coverage before sending the signal to another nearby truck, which will transmit the signal up to a communications satellite.

"In the old days you bounced stuff off of satellites," Lewis said. He meant that literally. The first communication satellite was called Echo and it was basically a large balloon that reflected radio waves.

Today's modern satellites act as relay stations. The spacecraft are designed to automatically receive the signal from the ground, process it to improve its strength and quality and then beam the signal back down to Earth.

Whether its Fox Sports in Los Angeles or CBS Sports in New York, all of the signals from the various games are brought into a network control center, where things like commercials and updates from around the league are mixed in.

The resulting program package is then sent back up to another set of satellite transponders for distribution around the nation. The signal coming back from space this time is picked up by your local network affiliate or cable operator for delivery to the home.

An increasingly popular way to watch NFL games on Sunday is through a service provided by DirecTV, which first started offering what's called the NFL Sunday Ticket in 1994.

Homeowners purchase a small satellite receiving dish to put on their roof and are then capable of getting DirecTV's programming directly from a satellite 22,300 miles over the equator. Because the satellite is moving at the same speed as Earth is rotating, it appears to remain in the same spot in the sky, so the DirecTV dish can be bolted in place.

The company has broadcast centers in California and Colorado, where all of the NFL programming is gathered just like a network affiliate or cable operator.

"We collect the feeds at our broadcast center from a variety of different sources, whether they're fiber optic or satellite. We process the signals at our uplink center, we encode them of course, and then transmit them up to our satellites," said DirectTV spokesman Robert Mercer.

The company's own satellites then broadcasts the signal back down to Earth for the roof-top dishes to receive. To watch different games, all you have to do is change the channel on your DIRECTV receiver.

Looking ahead, the satellite technology will enable new innovations in programming, similar to the way some DVDs come equipped with the ability to display multiple angles of a movie scene. The application for sports is obvious.

"Before long you're going to have choices of views at games, not just choices of games," Lewis said.

Mercer agrees, noting that the ability to record broadcasts with devices that don't use tape, such as Tivo, will open the door to new ways of watching NFL games via satellite in which individual views, or game highlights can be recalled with a touch of a remote button.

"It's all about enhancing the customer's viewing experience," Mercer said. "It happens that a lot of this technology is tailor-made for sports."

Although if there were no satellites the major networks could still deliver its football programming with the help of thick copper cables -- like they used to -- or thin fiber optic lines, a company like DirectTV wouldn't be in business if it weren't for the commercial space industry.

All told, if you are a DirectCTV subscriber, your broadcast of a game might have been bounced off of three different satellites before it reached your TV -- a clear marriage made in heaven between the NFL and the space program.

• Part One of "From Liftoff to Kickoff"

• Part Two of "From Liftoff to Kickoff"

• Complete coverage of world wide launch operations

• Follow the progress of Earth's probes to Mars