Canada
Two Canadian Cameras On Verge of Being Installed on Russian International Space Station
Two cameras developed by Vancouver-based Urthecast were expected to transmit images of the Earth on the Internet early next year from the International Space Station, but were removed for safety reasons. (Urthecast/Canadian Press)
The cameras themselves belong to Vancouver-based UrtheCast Corporation. The two cameras will allow for the first public online service to view the earth using UrtheCast’s special software.
“With the ISS cabling issue now resolved, we expect that the second spacewalk will result in a complete installation,” explained UrtheCast’s Chief Executive Officer, Scott Larson. “We are again thankful for the hard work of the engineering teams at Roscomos, Energia, and UrtheCast, which were able to quickly isolate and resolve the issue. We’re now confident that our business plan will remain unaffected.”
One of the cameras is a high resolution camera and the other medium resolution. They were manufactured by the UK tech company Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL). The cameras were launched in a pod to back in November and should have been installed just prior to Christmas. The installation marks one more step is this joint venture between UrtheCast and the Russian Space Station.
UrtheCast intends to sell images of the earth to the general public and post same videos on the website. As per the company’s website, they will have high definition feeds available in real time from their main camera called “Iris”. Currently, the public can watch a feed of the ongoing installation process from at the urethecast.com website.
UrtheCast’s engineers have created a handy animation to demonstrate how their cameras will image Earth from the International Space Station.
On The Web:
Russian cosmonauts undertake spacewalk to hookup Canadian-made camera
http://globalnews.ca/news/1109484/russian-astronauts-repeat-spacewalk-to-complete-camera-hookup/
