British engineers developing HD camera to live stream videos of Earth from space

Wouldn't it be amazing if we could watch earth live from space very much being on earth? British engineers are all set to build a camera to provide a live video feed of the Earth from the space, all courtesy the small government fundings that led to this magnificent develoment. Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in Oxfordshire has started working for installation of this high-definition camera on the International Space Station (ISS).

Video-streaming camera for space

UrtheCast, a Canadian company has tied up with RAL for this incredible venture and will build and test this HD camera. This project is a joint venture between three countries - UK, Russia and Canada. This camera will provide the users with a facility to control it with a steering. They will also be able to zoom in and zoom out and the facility is somewhat on the lines of Google Earth.

This would serve as a great educational tool for the children. This project will provide people an opportunity to watch Earth from the perspective of an astronaut. The British engineers will have to face some major challenges to ensure high resolution, keeping it stable in space and to deal with huge amounts of data produced by the camera. They will also have to ensure that the mirrors inside the camera stay stable withstanding high G-forces due to launching the device into space. These devices will also have to be capable of transmitting huge amounts of data to earth.

Via ZDNet