NASA astronauts are ringing in 2014 by sending greetings from space to the crowd gathered in New York's Times Square on new year's eve.

Prominently positioned below the world-famous Times Square New Year's Eve Ball, the dual LED screens will allow revellers to see this special greeting from space, NASA said.

Astronaut Mike Massimino, participating in the New Year's Eve Countdown event, will introduce a video greeting from Expedition 36 flight engineer Karen Nyberg, who returned from the International Space Station in November, and from three of the astronauts currently on board the space station.

NASA's Rick Mastracchio and Mike Hopkins, and Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency are part of a six-member crew currently on the orbiting laboratory, along with Oleg Kotov, Mikhail Tyurin and Sergey Ryazanski of the Russian Federal Space Agency.

Several NASA events have been broadcast in Times Square, including the Curiosity rover landing on Mars, which drew thousands of viewers, and the launches of two other spacecraft, the space agency said.