UK launch to broadcast 4K video from space station

The International Space Station's cameras will be carried on the US space agency's latest resupply mission.

More than 2.5 tons of food, clothing, equipment and scientific experiments are scheduled to be launched aboard a SpaceX rocket from Florida at 16:55 local time (20:55 GMT).

Upon arrival, the SEN camera payload will be prepared by the station crew and then placed through an airlock to be placed on the Bartolomeo deck – a piece of exoskeleton attached to the European Columbus Science Module.

The large robotic CanadaArm-2 will perform maneuvers scheduled for May.

One camera will look straight ahead at the horizon, capturing sunrise and sunset, as well as the northern and southern lights.

The second camera will look straight down to focus on what's happening on Earth. The amplitude scene size will be approximately 180 kilometers by 240 kilometers (110 miles by 150 miles). You will see features as small as 60 meters across.

The control software must be able to adjust exposures so that city lights are visible when the station transitions into darkness.

A third camera will be pointed at the forward docking point to record the comings and goings of the space capsules — the SpaceX Dragon ship and the soon-to-be-launched Boeing Starliner.

The plan is to stream 4K video – switching between these cameras – almost continuously. The data will be sent through ESA's relay system, which transmits signals to Earth via high-throughput satellites positioned high above the space station.

You can get a sense of what type of video to expect from the samples on this page. It was captured by SEN's ETV-A1 satellite, which has been operating for the past two years at an altitude of 505 km. More of these spacecraft are currently being assembled.

Again, it's a mix of wide and narrow angle views.

The London company monetizes these productions, for example, by working with film and TV companies on documentaries.

The company also hopes to attract the interest of news organizations that may want to reflect events in a different way, especially if those events have a global reach. Last year's Canadian wildfires would be a good example. Seeing the fire fronts and smoke plumes gives a much clearer sense of the size of the burned area.

SEN is by no means the first company to move into the “video from space” market, but Black believes he can find success by packaging the material the right way.

“Video from space is important and will become big business… because real-time video has the power of storytelling, and can provide insights into what is happening directly to people, in the same way Google does,” he said.

“Google Earth has had over a billion downloads for looking at still images, so this real-time dataset about Earth that tells the story of what's happening on Earth and in space right now, which is fully searchable and uses AI and augmented reality to show insights, It will be a huge data producer for humanity.

“No one has addressed this market before, and this is what we do.”