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- By Jonathan Amos
- scientific correspondent
A rare sight: a cloudless UK and Ireland
A UK startup’s ultra-high-definition cameras are on their way to the International Space Station (ISS).
SEN.COM’s 4K system will be attached to the front of the orbital outpost to capture what are expected to be some stunning views of Earth.
The London company already transmits live video from a small satellite that it launched in 2022.
Chief Charles Black says he plans to extend the company’s technology to many more places, including the Moon.
“Our goal is to bring a completely new way of looking at space, the Earth and the Moon,” he told BBC News.
“We want to place cameras in lunar orbit, on the lunar surface and on lunar rovers, filming astronauts as humans return to the Moon.
“We want to tell that story.”
ISS cameras are used in the US space agency’s latest resupply mission.
More than 2.5 tons of food, clothing, equipment and scientific experiments were launched aboard a SpaceX rocket from Florida at 4:55 p.m. local time (20:55 GMT).
After its arrival on Saturday, the station crew will prepare SEN’s camera payload and then fly it through an airlock to place it on the Bartolomeo deck, a piece of outer structure connected to the European Columbus science module.
The large robotic CanadaArm-2 will carry out the maneuvers planned for May.
The golden color of the Namibian desert in Africa
A camera will look toward the horizon and capture sunrises and sunsets, as well as the northern and southern lights.
A second camera will point downward to focus on what is happening on planet Earth. The size of the capacity scene will be approximately 180 kilometers by 240 kilometers (110 miles by 150 miles). You will see features as small as 60m wide.
The control software should be able to adjust the exposures so that when the station enters darkness, the city lights are visible.
A third camera will be directed to the forward docking point to record the comings and goings of the space capsules: the SpaceX Dragon ship and the soon-to-debut Boeing Starliner.
Smoke from the Canadian forest fires
The plan is to stream 4K video, jumping between these cameras, more or less continuously. The data will arrive via the European Space Agency’s relay system, which sends signals to the ground via high-performance satellites placed high above the space station.
You can get an idea of the type of video intended from the examples on this page. They were captured by the SEN’s ETV-A1 satellite, which has been operating for two years at an altitude of 505 kilometers. More spacecraft of this type are currently being assembled.
Again, it’s a mix of wide and narrow angle views.
The London company monetizes these products by working, for example, with film and television companies on documentaries.
The firm also hopes to generate interest from news organizations that want to reflect events in a different way, especially if those events have global reach. Last year’s wildfires in Canada would be a good example. Seeing their fire fronts and smoke columns gives a much clearer idea of how large the burned area was.
Flying over Interlaken and the Swiss Alps
SEN is by no means the first company to enter the “video from space” market, but Black believes it can succeed by packaging the material in the right way.
“Video from space is important and will be a big business… because real-time video has the power to tell stories and can deliver information about what is happening directly to people, in the same way that Google does “, said.
“Google Earth had over a billion downloads to look at still images, making it a real-time data set about Earth that tells the story of what’s happening on Earth and in space right now, which is can be fully searched and uses artificial intelligence and augmented reality to display insights, they will be a massive data product for humanity.
“Nobody had targeted that market before and that’s what we’re doing.”