Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
>> The next delivery of cargo
to the International Space Station is due
on the Dragon Spacecraft that is targeted
to launch on March 16th.
That will contain a lot of experiments that are going
to do their work inside the station.
And one big experiment that we'll be doing is work
on the outside of the station.
The high definition earth viewing experiment is part
of the next dragon payload.
And the HDEV Lead Engineer, Lori Motes is
with us this morning to talk about that.
You're flying four high definition cameras.
What's the story behind all of that?
Tell me where they go and things like that.
>> That's right.
We're flying four different commercial high definition
video cameras.
And our team designed the enclosure and the avionics
to integrate the experiment on orbit.
We'll be flying in the SpaceX Dragon trunk that's their
exposed facility and we're the first exposed payload
and the first powered payload that SpaceX is flying
so it's been exciting to be integrated with them
as they've gone through those challenges.
>> That's you in the back of the
>> Yes, this is a picture of us integrated in the SpaceX trunk
as they've gone through some of our challenges.
That's our enclosure and you can see several pockets
on either side of the camera where the windows
where the cameras peek out.
>> You have a close up view of the payload itself.
If you could, describe for us what, it's a big box
that has the cameras inside of it.
>> That's correct.
That's correct.
Since, no that's a pretty easy way to describe it.
So you can see on the bottom right picture there's two
windows on the left hand side and then one window
that you can see on the right hand side.
And when you pick these commercial cameras,
they aren't designed for space exposure so we've kind
of protected them from the vacuum
and the thermal environments of space with a part of our design.
And so that's what the box and the silver covering is for is
for protecting the cameras from that part
of the space environment.
>> And when you get there,
where is this apparatus going to end up?
>> When SpaceX docks on orbit, the robotic arm will remove us
from the SpaceX trunk and then take us
over to the European Space Agency's Columbus Module
and then this is a great picture, we'll be installed
on the bottom location that you see there
on their external payload facility.
There's like four different platforms that you can see there
and the bottom platform is the Nader location.
It's pointing towards earth.
So all four of our cameras will be pointed
at different angles towards earth.
We have one camera that will be pointing forward so looking
where the ISS is traveling.
And then we have one camera that will be pointing straight
down exactly towards earth and two cameras
that will be pointed kind of towards earth at the back to see
where the ISS has been traveling.
>> But they're all pointed in essentially the same path
so they can track where the station is flying.
>> Exactly.
So if there was a weather event say like a hurricane
that we wanted to see or track, we could see,
if the ISS was going over that event we could watch it
as ISS is approaching, transfer to the camera, then watch it
as the ISS is over the event and then transfer
and watch as the ISS passes.
>> Is the goal here to get a lot
of beautiful HD video of the earth?
>> No, that's certainly a good side effect
but it's really an experiment.
The reason we have four different commercial cameras is
we want to see not just how these commercial products
respond to the radiation environment.
The cameras themselves, they're sensors
and also the integrated system.
The products weren't designed to be exposed
to the radiation environment of space so we want to see how
as we move forward, as NASA is partnering
with more commercial entities and as we try to move forward
and achieve our goals, we want to see how robust we can be
and to make more intelligent decisions as we move forward.
>> You described earlier
that the enclosure is protecting these cameras to some extent
but not completely I guess.
>> That's true.
Yes, I mean we still need, more robust as I would be to put it
in a completely enclosed box
but then you wouldn't get very good video would you?
So it has to be able to see outside so outside
of the space station you still have the radiation effects
and the video sensors are particularly sensitive
to radiation exposure.
So we're actually partnering with university students
and they'll be recording some pieces of the video data
over time from the different cameras and developing ways
to examine how the video is degrading
as the cameras are exposed to more and more radiation.
>> And I want to ask you about the student involvement
but there is a way for people to see the video as it's shot,
right, or relatively soon after.
>> That's true.
One of our kind of key missions here is it's basically live
video streaming.
The only delay in the system is the delay
in down linking the video from the station to earth.
There is a website that is being set up, an Ustream website,
where there's a link there, that once we're installed
and powered, it will be streaming the video essentially
24/7 down and so anybody from the public can come
and see the video and link to
and see just where the station is.
Eventually they want to have a kind of a graphic of the world
with an image that you can see, this is now
and then you can see the actual video
>> You can see where it's headed.
>> To correlate it to where it's going, yeah.
So that's kind of the image, I think the link,
if you go to the link now it just says video
from the NASA website but it's going to be pretty exciting.
>> You mentioned students a moment ago,
there's students involved in both the preparation
and then the ending experiment after it arrives.
>> Yes that's true.
We have partnered with the University
of Houston Clear Lake.
They'll be maintaining a website
and also operating the payload when it's on orbit.
The payload is pretty autonomous meaning once it's installed
on orbit and we turn it on, it just kind of cycles
through the four different cameras on its own
but we do have the option that if we want to change the order
that the cameras cycle or how long we sit on any one camera,
they can do that, make that change.
And as time progresses,
if say one camera finally stops working, we can cycle
between three cameras and we can make those kind of changes
and the students would be doing that effort,
as well as analyzing the video
to see how it's degrading over time.
In the actual hardware development itself we actually
involved the HUNCH Program which is High School Students United
with NASA Creating Hardware.
>> Of course it is.
[laughter]
>> The HUNCH program so it's high school kids,
they are coming in, I mean it's amazing, they are so young
but they are creating hardware, software and electronics.
We actually have brackets.
We use some mechanical design and they actually built hardware
that is in our box and about to fly so it's part
of what made us work so.
>> We'll be looking forward to seeing that.
>> Yeah.
>> It ought to be very interesting to see
that once it does the HDEV payload schedule to fly
on the Dragon Spacecraft.
It's launching March 16th.
Lori Motes, thank you.
Lori is the Lead Engineer for the HDEV Payload. ------------------------------4bde9c3c719e--