Watch Earth Spin From Your Browser

[n2doc]

You might not have hundreds of thousands of dollars for a seat on Richard Branson’s private shuttle, but one enterprising outfit is about to offer the next best thing: the chance to see the Earth from space, from the comfort of your couch.


With the aid of Russian space authorities, Vancouver-based UrtheCast (pronounced “earthcast”) will launch two cameras into orbit today (Nov. 25) with the immediate goal of streaming images of the Earth back home in near-real time.

For free, Internet users will log on to UrtheCast.com anytime to see the beauty of the big blue ball we live on, as the cameras make the 90-minute revolution around Earth, 16 times a day. It's a sight few have ever seen before.

“Ten years ago it would have been incredibly difficult to do this,” Scott Larson, CEO of UrtheCast, told FoxNews.com. But after three years of raising money and working with Russian and Canadian engineers and developers, the project is about to lift-off -- literally. The cameras will ride a Russian Soyuz rocket on Monday at 3:53 p.m. EST from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

“I’ve never seen a launch before -- we’re all excited, there's no doubt about it,” Larson said.

The cameras will orbit for a few days before docking at the Russian portion of the International Space Station (ISS). The largest artificial body in orbit, the ISS serves as a research laboratory and testing facility for future space missions. It will add streaming media to its long list of functions.

more

http://news.discovery.com/earth/watch-earth-spin-from-your-browser-131125.htm

[haikugal]

1. Very cool...

totally awesome! I look forward to this. Thanks n2doc for posting this information.

[Warren DeMontague]

2. Cool. I've been waiting for this, for a while.

I remember Al Gore was pushing for something like that prior to the 2000 election; it would not have been a terribly expensive proposition, but the RW excoriated him for it.