Who needs a bird’s eye view when you could go with an astronaut’s? One company’s partnering with NASA to give us just that.
Vancouver-based UrtheCast installed two cameras aboard the International Space Station via a Soyuz rocket in 2013, in a mission to “democratize the Earth Observation industry.” From your computer, tablet, or smartphone, you can gawk at our blue marble in near-real time online. The cams’ coverage area is 51 to -51 degrees latitude, a belt from Chile to England that packs in 90 percent of the population, the company says.
Soon, UrtheCast will be streaming in ultra HD, providing 60-second videos at 30 frames a second. It says it’s the sole company that provides color, 4K video of Earth from space. The service’s basic account is free, allowing users to subscribe to views of certain locations or big world events.
This type of platform could obviously offer benefits, from climate change monitoring to planning disaster relief. But plain ol’, red-blooded, space-lovin’ civilians can enjoy, too: Crack open a beer and look for your apartment complex as seen from 200 miles above. (Check the paranoia, though—the 1.1-meter res video cam and 5.5-meter res still cam can capture stuff like cars and buildings, but can’t make out faces or license plate numbers.)
In a press release yesterday, UrtheCast CEO and co-founder Scott Larson said the high definition streaming would begin this summer. Watch this video from February that captured UrtheCast’s initial images from space, including footage of Jamaica, Rome, and Dubai.
Hubble has space porn covered, but is geography porn a thing? Geo porn? Dunno, but these views could end up being the coolest maps ever.
Image credit: Getty