CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — As if launching people off their home planet to live and work aboard a fully functional space station wasn’t impressive enough, the folks at NASA are poised to broadcast the endeavor on high-definition television (HDTV) today.

At 11:30 a.m. EST (1630 GMT), astronauts aboard the International Space Station will beam down an HDTV broadcast of NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria—the outpost’s Expedition 14 commander—to kick off the Space Video Gateway. The gateway is designed to relay high bandwidth digital television signals to Earth, NASA officials say.

Expedition 14 flight engineer Thomas Reiter—a European Space Agency astronaut—will play cameraman with a Sony HD 750A camera as ISS astronauts share a meal, talk space nutrition and discuss their long duration spaceflight. Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin rounds out the space station’s three-astronaut Expedition 14 crew.

The camera and other assorted hardware launched toward the ISS aboard NASA’s Atlantis shuttle in September. While not the first HDTV system shipped to the station, it is the first to be operated live to give a new glimpse into orbital living.

“HDTV provides up to six times the resolution of regular analog video,” NASA’s station HDTV principal investigator Rodney Grubbs said in a statement. “On previous missions, we’ve flown HDTV cameras but had to wait until after the mission to retrieve the tapes, watch the video and share it with the science and engineering community, the media and the public. For the first time ever, this test lets us stream live HDTV from space so the public can experience what it’s like to be there.”

Today’s broadcast results from a cooperative effort by NASA, Discovery HD Theater and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) will be carried live at Discovery Channel stores and Japan’s NHK broadcast network.

So if you don’t live in Japan or subscribe to HDTV at home, head on over to a Discovery Channel store (psst, if you’re in New York there’s one at Grand Central Station) to watch the show.