Vancouver-based tech firm UrtheCast has released the first colour videos of Earth taken from space.
Images of Boston, London, Sao Paulo and even Winnipeg captured by the Iris Ultra HD camera mounted on the Russian module of the International Space Station are available at one-metre resolution, enough to see vehicles - but not fine enough to spy on neighbours or read licence plates.
The videos are free to view at urthecast.com.
The Russian space agency shouldered the cost of transporting and installing the Iris video camera as well as a second medium-resolution camera - worth a total of $35 million - in exchange for access to the images. Two additional cameras are scheduled to be installed on the American module in 2017.
The medium-resolution camera is fixed, while Iris can be pointed at whatever is interesting for a little more than one minute at a time, said UrtheCast CEO Scott Larson.
"It's 400 kilometres away and moving at 25,000 kilometres an hour and sometimes physics gets in the way, so this is the best that we have," he said. "It's the best that anyone has." Opening the system to the public is a kind of soft rollout for UrtheCast, which will begin selling images to commercial clients in late July.
"We task the camera based on whatever we think is important and what our customers value," he explained. "But if a million tweets come out of one area we can point the camera there."
The Iris camera delivers streaming video of an area 5.5 kilometres wide and 3.6 kilometres deep from an altitude of 400 kilometres. By entering an address, people can find out when the ISS will next pass overhead, allowing them to see an astronaut's view of a specific neighbourhood, or large crowds at a concert or sporting event.
In footage of London, a viewer can easily identify landmarks such as Big Ben, Parliament and the London Eye and observe traffic on the streets and the Thames River. In a Sao Paulo clip, northbound traffic is clearly quite heavy, while the football pitch is empty. Images of Dubai clearly show individual boats docked at man-made islands.
Beyond space-based voyeurism, video and high-resolution still images could be employed to monitor major events such as protest marches, catastrophes such as forest fires and floods, and anthropogenic phenomena such as deforestation, desertification and agriculture.
http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Vancouver+UrtheCast+broadcasts+high+video+from+spa ce+station/11143062/story.html
Images of Boston, London, Sao Paulo and even Winnipeg captured by the Iris Ultra HD camera mounted on the Russian module of the International Space Station are available at one-metre resolution, enough to see vehicles - but not fine enough to spy on neighbours or read licence plates.
The videos are free to view at urthecast.com.
The Russian space agency shouldered the cost of transporting and installing the Iris video camera as well as a second medium-resolution camera - worth a total of $35 million - in exchange for access to the images. Two additional cameras are scheduled to be installed on the American module in 2017.
The medium-resolution camera is fixed, while Iris can be pointed at whatever is interesting for a little more than one minute at a time, said UrtheCast CEO Scott Larson.
"It's 400 kilometres away and moving at 25,000 kilometres an hour and sometimes physics gets in the way, so this is the best that we have," he said. "It's the best that anyone has." Opening the system to the public is a kind of soft rollout for UrtheCast, which will begin selling images to commercial clients in late July.
"We task the camera based on whatever we think is important and what our customers value," he explained. "But if a million tweets come out of one area we can point the camera there."
The Iris camera delivers streaming video of an area 5.5 kilometres wide and 3.6 kilometres deep from an altitude of 400 kilometres. By entering an address, people can find out when the ISS will next pass overhead, allowing them to see an astronaut's view of a specific neighbourhood, or large crowds at a concert or sporting event.
In footage of London, a viewer can easily identify landmarks such as Big Ben, Parliament and the London Eye and observe traffic on the streets and the Thames River. In a Sao Paulo clip, northbound traffic is clearly quite heavy, while the football pitch is empty. Images of Dubai clearly show individual boats docked at man-made islands.
Beyond space-based voyeurism, video and high-resolution still images could be employed to monitor major events such as protest marches, catastrophes such as forest fires and floods, and anthropogenic phenomena such as deforestation, desertification and agriculture.
http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Vancouver+UrtheCast+broadcasts+high+video+from+spa ce+station/11143062/story.html
