UrtheCast To Livestream HD Video of Earth From Space

By mounting a pair of cameras (one still, one video) to the Russian section of the International Space Station (ISS), Urthecast is readying a non-stop, 24-hour view of our watery planet. I just wish I didn’t have to wait until 2012 to see it!

From the UrtheCast site and via content partners/custom APIs, you’ll be able to search for locations, tag places, move and zoom the cameras, or rewind and fast forward footage. The space station orbits the earth 15.7 times a day, so there will be plenty of opportunity to watch the world go round. Not sure how they’ll manage millions of people trying to zoom in on their houses at once, though.

UK based Rutherford Appleton Labs is building two high definition cameras. A medium resolution camera will provide a three colour image with a swath of 45 kilometers and a resolution of 5.5 meters. The high-resolution camera will offer a video image with a frame rate of 3.25 frames per second with a resolution that is comparable to much of Google Earth. This will allow Users to see man-made objects and groups of people.

In a Facebook post, UrtheCast said they’ll “be going into space to put the cameras on the ISS in spring 2012”. Damn it. [UrtheCast]