International Space Station will transmit 4K video stream

A UK start-up will be hitching a ride on the International Space Station to beam 4K videos back down to Earth. The cameras from SEN will be attached to the front of the space station to capture high-definition footage of our planet from space.

The company already has a camera attached to a satellite. CEO Charles Black told BBC News he hopes to be able to film from other locations, including the Moon, in future.

“We want to put cameras in lunar orbit, on the lunar surface and on lunar rovers, filming astronauts as humans return to the Moon,” he said, “We want to tell that story.”

The cameras will be delivered to the ISS as part of the next restocking mission, which will also supply food, clothing and science experiments.

One camera will be positioned looking straight ahead at the horizon. This will capture sunrises and sunsets, as well as the northern and southern lights.

A second camera will point straight down onto Earth. The range this camera will be able to capture is from 60 metres up to 240km across (150 miles). A third camera will capture footage of the docking station and will record the comings and goings of space capsules.

The video captured by these cameras will be live streamed in 4K definition, moving between the three cameras, giving a mixture of close-up and wide-angle views. The data will be sent via the European Space Agency’s relay system bouncing the signals to Earth via a satellite situated above the space station.

Of course, astronauts have been capturing images and videos of Earth from the ISS for some time now, with many astronauts showing off their photography skills.

Black believes that video streams from space will be useful for both news channels and TV and film crews working on documentaries, for example.

“Video from space is important and will be big business… because real-time video has story-telling power and can deliver insights about what’s happening directly to people, in the same way Google does,” he said.

[via BBC news]