YouTube star and former NASA engineer Mark Rober joined forces with NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement for a special live broadcast on November 4, 2026, connecting students across the United States directly with the International Space Station. The interactive Earth-to-space video stream, hosted to celebrate National STEM Day, featured astronaut Anil Menon speaking live from orbit alongside Rober, who participated from California.
During the hour-long session, students had the opportunity to ask questions about living and working in microgravity, human spaceflight technology, and the daily realities of astronaut training. Menon demonstrated how routine tasks such as eating, drinking, and conducting scientific research shift in a zero-gravity environment, while Rober provided engaging educational commentary on the underlying physics and engineering principles.
The high-profile broadcast coincided with a major new educational initiative between NASA and Rober’s non-profit organization, the ClassCrunchLabs Foundation. The collaboration is designed to expand hands-on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics resources for primary and secondary classrooms across the nation. By combining NASA’s agency expertise with Rober’s massive digital reach, the project aims to inspire the next generation of engineers and space explorers.
Rober spent nine years working as a mechanical engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he contributed directly to the design of the Curiosity rover that landed on Mars in 2012. Since transitioning to full-time content creation, he has built one of the internet’s largest science channels, accumulating more than 80 million subscribers and billions of views with elaborate engineering projects, viral physics demonstrations, and creative problem-solving challenges.
The STEM Day event highlights Rober’s continuing efforts to bridge traditional science institutions and modern digital audiences. Earlier in the fall, YouTube and Google.org announced a multi-million-dollar grant to support his foundation's free STEM curriculum, further cementing his role as one of the premier science communicators of the digital era.
