The Loop - Domani Studios Design Blog

Shooting the Moon

DS was approached by The Martin Agency to help celebrate the 40th anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 mission to the Moon. They challenged us to figure out a way to truly recreate the mission online. After a few months of strategic thinking, 3D modeling, coding, testing, and a handfull of all-nighters WeChooseTheMoon.org was born, and after 40 years the Apollo 11 launched again.

The site went live on July 16, 2009 at 8:02 a.m. with the rocket taking off at 9:32 a.m. – exactly 40 years to the minute after the historic launch. For 4 days the site relived Apollo 11’s lunar mission, minute by minute, in real time - leveraging almost 110 hours of Apollo 11 audio transmissions, full screen 3D animations, and live twitter feeds in the voice of the astronauts.

The core challenge on this project involved creating a truly “real time” event that leveraged massive audio and video files for a mass audience… Pretty scary really. When the streaming audio countdown sounded off: “3…2…1… we have liftoff!!!!” the site needed to respond perfectly. Hundreds of thousands of eyes were watching worldwide – many of them space and technology fanatics with a close eye to detail, so there was zero room for anything but a perfect delivery – after all, 40 years ago the rocket launched perfectly, why wouldn’t it on the anniversary.

Happily the site launched smoothly just as the Apollo 11 rocket had 40 years earlier.

Highlights:
• Over 3 million unique site visits during the first 3 weeks
• Configured Support for 1 Million Concurrent Audio Streams
• Site featured on almost every major news network including CNN’s giant video “News Wall” multiple times through out the 4 day mission.
• The site aggregated 400 photographs and 44 archival videos from NASA and the JFK Library for the first time in one location.
• Over 700 transmission excerpts broadcast out on Twitter exactly 40 years after they were said
• DS developed a widget which also tracked the mission that users could load on desktops or embed in personal blogs.
• A spectrum analyzer dynamically parsed the live-audio wave form providing another compelling visual to capture the user’s attention.
• Once the live mission ended the site transitioned to a archived experience where users can move freely between the separate stages