How VidDay Helped Create a Video for an Astronaut on the International Space Station
- Denis Devigne
- 5 days ago
- 3 min read
Most VidDays travel by email, text, or a link shared between friends and family.
One of them made it about 200 miles above Earth.
VidDay once helped friends, family, and a few surprise guests create a video for an astronaut living aboard the International Space Station. It was a holiday celebration for someone who couldn’t exactly drop by home for dinner, and it remains one of the most unusual VidDays we’ve ever been part of.
A video for an astronaut hundreds of miles above Earth
Living on the International Space Station comes with an obvious challenge when birthdays, holidays, and other celebrations arrive. The people you care about are still on Earth.
For this surprise, messages from friends and family were brought together into one VidDay so the astronaut could hear from people back home while in orbit.
Then a couple of unexpected faces joined in.
Actor Idris Elba recorded a message, as did Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who knows better than almost anyone what it feels like to spend time away from Earth and the people you love.
Hadfield brought another perspective as someone who had experienced life in space himself. And Elba spoke about being inspired by the astronaut’s story and the importance of having ambitious dreams.
Together with the messages from friends and family, those surprises turned the video into something the astronaut wasn’t expecting to receive hundreds of kilometres above Earth.
Messages feel different when distance is unavoidable
Distance is one of the reasons group videos exist in the first place.
Someone moves to another country. A grandparent can’t travel to a wedding. A coworker retires while former teammates are scattered across different cities. A student graduates while relatives watch from somewhere else.
An astronaut aboard the International Space Station is an extreme example, but the problem is familiar. The people who want to show up for someone aren’t always able to be in the same place.
A group video gives everyone another way to be present.
For this particular VidDay, that meant familiar faces from home appearing on a screen in orbit, mixed with a couple of people the recipient never expected to hear from.
Why this VidDay still stands out to us
We’ve seen VidDays created for people all over the world, but sending one to the International Space Station is difficult to top.
What stayed with us wasn’t simply the novelty of seeing VidDay reach space. It was the reaction to hearing from people who had taken the time to record something specifically for that person.
As VidDay CEO Rossel Sabourin said at the time:
“Watching this astronaut’s reaction reminds us why we do what we do.”
That still captures what made the moment memorable for our team.
The technology made it possible to deliver the video to space. The people who contributed are what made it worth watching.
AWS later shared a behind-the-scenes look at how VidDay’s technology helped make that delivery possible.
A group video can go almost anywhere
You probably won’t need to send your next birthday video into orbit.
But this VidDay became a pretty memorable reminder that being far away doesn’t have to decide who gets to participate in a celebration.
When friends, relatives, coworkers, or mentors are spread across different places, they can each record a message wherever they happen to be. Those individual clips can then become one video for the person everyone came together to celebrate.
In this case, the recipient happened to be circling Earth.
We haven’t found a much longer-distance delivery address yet.
