HD Space Camera Will Provide Live Astronaut’s View of Earth From ISS

A Canadian company plans to one-up Google Earth by streaming video footage straight from the International Space Station to the web with a top time delay of just a few hours.

Urthecast is due to begin beaming the view from the ISS by autumn 2013 — the equipment will be finished by the summer, then shipped to Russia and sent to the space station via two Soyuz rockets. Once there, the Russian space agency will install it beneath the ISS and downlink the data to Earth, where it will be published.



Company CEO Scott Larson says its two cameras (one for stills and one for video) are so powerful, they will be able to pick up anything that’s around five meters in size — “rooftops, fields, rivers, roads, forests, agricultural, farms, things like that,” he said. Ninety-second-long clips will also be carried out for close-ups of anything measuring about a metre, such as vehicles and groups of people. It does, however, stop short of imaging individual people, avoiding any potential backlash experienced by the likes of Google Street View. Once up and running, users will be able to use the free service to search for specific videos and save them.

While adding video makes this a great competitor for Google Earth, it’s the relatively brief time delay for the streamed footage that is most impressive and stands to blow its predecessor out of the water (if it works).

Well, there is a small part of me that thinks the delay may lead to all kinds of censorship, but hey, that's just me. It will be a pretty wild thing to see "almost" live pictures and video. My guess is that this will lead to an increased upload on ATS!

I saw a UFO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I feel kind of bad for pot farmers. This seems a bit like illegal search.

I wish they would point it towards space instead of towards earth.

HD Space Camera Will Provide Live Astronaut’s View of Earth From ISS.... til a UFO cruises by...

reply to post by hhcore


Yep, you got it

In a free world, why do we have to have any time delay. Why not a live feed!

So many Governments wanting to keep secrets. Consider the reality, who are they keeping secrets from? Other countries? Don't be silly. There are enough spy satellites in orbit that one more would make no difference at all.

They simply do not want you and me to have a live feed!

I will be happy when some forward thinking company gives us a live feed! I will be waiting a long time. It will probably come from a strange place. Iran perhaps?

S&F

P

Originally posted by hhcore
HD Space Camera Will Provide Live Astronaut’s View of Earth From ISS.... til a UFO cruises by...

Well that comment didn't take long,what ufo's

link?

I gave up watching the 'live feed' from the ISS because most of the time you can only see a fraction of the Earth due to most of the feed taken up by the ISS, then it cuts out a lot of the time and there is a photo of the Earth instead . It's really just a joke and nowhere near a 'live feed' as it claims. Possibly a time delay on it as well...

Originally posted by pheonix358
In a free world, why do we have to have any time delay. Why not a live feed!

So many Governments wanting to keep secrets. Consider the reality, who are they keeping secrets from? Other countries? Don't be silly. There are enough spy satellites in orbit that one more would make no difference at all.

They simply do not want you and me to have a live feed!

I will be happy when some forward thinking company gives us a live feed! I will be waiting a long time. It will probably come from a strange place. Iran perhaps?

S&F

P

edit on 14/1/2013 by pheonix358 because: (no reason given)

Look at the resolution that's why there is NO live feed think about it if they pass over a sensitive area the don't want the images on the net do they.

Just think of who could use images like that

Some other info

Image Data
Allows for a longitudinal look at various locations (that will be imaged about 16 times/day)
Image quality will be comparable to that of Google Earth
Large objects and groups of people will be discernible
Ground pixel size near 1.1 meters
5-meter image resolution

The HRC will be attached to a steerable platform, allowing for higher accuracy. The HRC will take video of the Earth with a full-frame image rate of 3.25 frames per second.

Video might not be a good as people think!

this is awesome, thank you for sharing. can you imagine being up in that ISS ? I would be FREAKING OUT hahaha. beautiful, but to think that little glass is between you and an infinite void -- yikes!