Behold, Earth.
The live stream you see above is beamed down from the International Space Station, which orbits some 250 miles above our planet. It’s filmed by the Earth and space live streaming company Sen, whose high-definition camera system, SpaceTV-1, peers down at sprawling forests, oceans, metropolises, and beyond.
“You see a beautiful planet and a borderless world,” Sen’s founder and CEO, Charles Black, told Mashable.
Anyone, with internet, can watch it. “It’s about democratizing space,” Black added.
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The video from Sen, a Mashable media partner, averages about 20 hours of live footage every day, with just a few seconds or so of latency as the signal travels to Earth’s surface — via NASA‘s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System — and is then distributed to people watching, like you. Spread out over 24-hours are routine loss of signal periods, which can last fewer than two minutes or as long as some 20 minutes, wherein Sen will replay recently live streamed footage. Signal losses in orbit occur for a variety of reasons, such as when NASA switches satellite relays during downlinking or when the signal is blocked by the station’s sprawling solar arrays.
“You never know what you might see.”
Tuning in, you’ll regularly see new sights. The space station orbits Earth about 16 times a day, and during each orbit the floating laboratory shifts a little to the west. “Whenever you log on, you can see something different,” Black said. “You never know what you might see.” When the station is orbiting above the nightside of Earth, a message on the bottom of the screen will read “Sunrise in X minutes.” The messaging also shows where the view is, such as “Tanzania.”
We’ve certainly come a long way since U.S. researchers captured the first view of Earth from space in 1946. It’s grainy, but poignant. Some 14 years later, a new era in Earth observation commenced when the U.S. weather satellite TIROS-1 beamed back over 19,000 orbital images in 1960.
Now, you can watch high-definition live footage from your phone.
