Shooting in High-Def From Outer Space With UrtheCast

Google Earth provides Web users with basic global satellite imagery periodically updated. “It’s always sunny,” says Scott Larson, “and the car is parked out front.” Soon, Larson says, his startup, UrtheCast, will begin broadcasting high-resolution, near-live global images and video from the cameras it’s planning to affix to the International Space Station.

A Russian rocket flying to the space station in October will drop off about 238 pounds of the Canadian company’s equipment, including the first nondefense high-definition video camera for filming earth from space. UrtheCast’s 4.5-foot-long camera, designed to handle the radiation and extreme temperatures of orbit, will record 90-second videos 150 times a day as the spacecraft circles the planet, Larson says. A second camera will continuously snap still photos. Together, the stills will cover a 47.3-kilometer-wide swath of the planet and generate 2.5 terabytes of data a day, the equivalent of about 270 full-length movies. UrtheCast’s engineers will condense and post the visuals to the company’s website an hour or two later. “With our images, you can see things moving and changing,” Larson says.