Among the equipment brought to the International Space Station by the Dragon spacecraft there’s the High Definition Viewing Earth (HDEV) experiment, a system consisting of four Commercial HD video cameras. Upon arrival, the crew of the Station quickly installed the equipment on the External Payload Facility, an external platform of ESA’s Columbus module. With these cameras, you can now see the Earth live shot from space on a dedicated Internet channel.
In January 2014, there was a commercial initiative by UrtheCast (written as “You are the Cast” but pronounced “Earth Cast”), a Canadian company that wants to sell the streaming broadcasts and photographs of the Earth taken from the International Space Station. The HDEV experiment is totally separate and aims to evaluate the behavior of four video cameras of types that are commonly sold in stores while they’re used in space. They’re exposed to harsh conditions such as radiation levels well above those on Earth. These are Hitachi, Panasonic, Sony and Toshiba models.
The images of the Earth taken from the HDEV experiment video cameras are streamed to a dedicated Internet channel. The images automatically cycle between the different cameras and that’s handled automatically. This provides different view angles because the cameras are positioned exactly to get views a bit different of the Earth.
The streaming is continuous but when the International Space Station is the shadow of the Earth and in the dark the images are dark too. In some cases, there may be a loss of signal or for various reasons the HDEV experiment may be not operating for short periods. In those cases, the channel you will only show a gray screen or recorded images will be transmitted.
The HDEV experiment is expected to continue until October 2015, of course if at least one of the video cameras will keep on working until then. At that point, NASA will evaluate the performances and conditions of the video cameras and decide which of them to use in future missions.
For about a year and a half, it will be possible to enjoy the view of the Earth from the International Space Station. We got used to watching images of the planet as seen from space and often videos but in this case it’s an amazing show that is typically live and continuous.
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