Space Station To Get HD Streaming Video Camera

superglaze writes "A high-definition streaming video camera is to be installed on the International Space Station within a year. Built in the UK, the camera will hopefully provide a Google Earth-quality view on our planet, and the stream will be viewable — complete with zooming and panning capabilities — on the web."

Comments

panning and zooming

[pahles]

And how are they going to handle multiple viewers wanting to operate the camera at the same time?

Re:panning and zooming

[ericloewe]

And how are they going to handle multiple viewers wanting to operate the camera at the same time?

I'd say they mean we can manipulate the image down here, but the camera is static. Kinda like digital zoom and optical zoom. If we can actually control the camera through the web, I'd guess they draw a few people a day from a pool of registered users and allow them to control the camera for 30 seconds or something of the sort.

Re:panning and zooming

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm on record for calling 'shotgun'.

Excellent. You can sit next to me while I drive the controls.

Re:panning and zooming

[MrTester]

And how are they going to handle multiple viewers wanting to operate the camera at the same time?

No Worries. Google already figured it out.
I mean, Im already able to zoom in the satellite cameras for Google Earth.

Whats that? software? digital image? ...
Enough with your crazy techno babel!

Re:But how will it be monetized?

[biodata]

I imagine any government or agency that can't afford their own spy satellite might find uses for it. Also, selling the feeds to news agencies when stuff is occurring on a scale that can be captured by the camera. Imagine how much news agencies would have paid to have live zooming grainy video of Osama's compound during the raids, or 9/11 as it happened, kidnap of ships by Somali pirates, airplane crashes. The applications to news gathering are endless, and each clip would be worth a decent amount to the news agencies I would imagine, and would fuel a thirst for massive replication of the facility, and probably increases in resolution (military-permitting). Then there's watching weather events live, live feeds of long distance car races. Add in some post-processing with tracking and such and you can imagine some nice fancy live animations of sporting and news events, timelapse of forests being cut down, crops ripening, buildings being built, floods engulfing land. I think the first poster is right and there will be long queues for access.

Re:But how will it be monetized?

[Tx]

"So how do you actually make the money needed to make it viable in the long term?"

There will be plenty of repeat views, I'd think. Any time there's a flood/tsunami/volcanic ash cloud/other large-scale natural phenomenon, their problem is more likely to be keeping up with demand than anything else. Plenty of ad revenue.

Re:Al Gore proposed a satellite to do this in 1990

[vlm]

Too expensive said NASA.

But they built it anyway, and it sits in storage because no one has a launch plan.

Aka the Triana although the official marketing name was the DSCOVR

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_Climate_Observatory

Re:But how will it be monetized?

[gblackwo]

The ISS makes almost 16 orbits per day.