Urthecast

UrtheCast Corp.
Public
Traded as TSX: UR
Industry Internet
Headquarters Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Area served
 Worldwide
Key people
 Wade Larson (President and CEO)
Dr. Sergei Bedziouk (Vice President)
Dr. George Tyc (CTO)
Issa Nakhleh (CFO)
Products Remote sensing
Geospatial information
Revenue $41.1 million (2015) [1]
Website UrtheCast.com

UrtheCast is a Vancouver-based Canadian company that will distribute the operational software for the first publicly accessible high definition cameras installed on the International Space Station. The company went public on the Toronto Stock Exchange in June 2013.[2]

ISS

The camera systems to be operated by UrtheCast are part of an international project involving several nations, primarily Russia (through the Russian Space Agency), Canada and the United Kingdom. The UrtheCast service will be accessible online and will allow users to access the two UrtheCast cameras from their homes to examine places or events. One medium resolution and one high resolution camera have been built by the British Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL).[3] The resolution on the ground is given as 5.5 m (18 ft) for medium resolution and 1.1 m (3 ft 7.2 in) for high resolution.[4][5]

The UrtheCast platform utilizes some measure of open source coding.[6] The company held a contest for the naming of cameras, with "Iris" as the chosen name.

The cameras were delivered to the ISS on the Progress M-21M (Progress 53P) cargo spacecraft, which docked with the station on 29 November 2013. On 27 December 2013, an attempt was made to install the cameras on the Russian Zvezda module of the ISS, during a spacewalk by Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazansky, which also broke the record for the longest Russian spacewalk ever.[7] A problem occurred that prevented the cameras from properly transmitting telemetry data, so the installation was not completed and the cameras were taken back inside the space station. A second attempt to install the cameras, by the same pair of spacewalkers, was made on 27 January 2014.[8] The high resolution camera was successfully installed. The second of the two cameras, the medium-resolution unit, did not send any telemetry. The delay installing the pair of cameras is not expected to hold up UrtheCast's plans.[9] It was reported later on that they were able to resolve the connectivity issues so that as of this time, both cameras are installed.[10]

In August 2014, Urthecast's imagery from its medium resolution camera, Theia "hit the market". There is a page for ordering the imagery but you have to provide your name, email and organization.[11]

As of November 2014, UrtheCast is yet to announce when its service will become operational.

Future

On October 2014, UrtheCast outlined plans to install a remote sensing camera and a radar imaging payload on the Tranquility module in 2017 to be launched in the trunk of a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship.[12] The company also announced that it has acquired access to the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) from their partner NanoRacks for the purpose of increasing its data downlink capacity and speed. TDRSS will allow UrtheCast to significantly augment both data collection and delivery to its current and future data clients. UrtheCast anticipates that it will begin delivery of some of its data via TDRSS late 2014 or early 2015.[13]

On June 22, 2015 Urthecast announced plans to place a 16 satellite constellation in orbit to image the Earth. Urthecast asked the UK manufacturer SSTL to make the satellites, and the Spanish organization Elecnor Deimos to design the ground control functions. The goal is to make large amounts of Earth observation imagery from multiple sensors, and to place the data in a user-friendly, cloud-based platform available to people to process the data. Urthecast's proposed constellation intends to pair an optical satellite (to view the Earth in visible light) with a radar platform (which to image the ground, in any weather, night and day).

Four pairs plan to be launched in two planes - one over the poles, the second on mid-latitudes. The radar sensor will lead, with the optical camera following about a minute later. The all-weather radar capability will get an image, and the lead satellite can identify cloud-free locations for the following camera system to get images of the ground. Urthecast is working on a radar sensor that will operate simultaneously in the X-band and L-band frequencies, obtaining ground features within a box of 1 meter and 5 meters meter, when the system is in "spotlight" mode. The optical cameras will have a half-meter resolution, and will be switchable to a video mode, producing short videos of moving images at 30 frames per second. The radar sensors, will be made in Canada, the satellite manufacturing and integration will be done by the UK's Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd at its Guildford base, including the optical cameras.

Each spacecraft will weigh a few hundred kilograms, and plan to launched in batches in 2019 and 2020. Elecnor Deimos Space, based in Madrid, will do the mission planning and analysis, and monitor the ground stations used to communicate with the satellites.

Other constellation announcements are Airbus (which owns SSTL) plans to build a 900 spacecraft for OneWeb, which aims to cover the Earth with broadband connectivity. US firm Skybox Imaging, owned by Google, is building a constellation of video cameras in orbit.[14]

References

  1. ↑ "IRWeblink".
  2. ↑ UrtheCast Announces the Completion of Reverse Takeover Transaction and Private Placement, Newswire Canada, 24 June 2013.
  3. ↑ World's first 'live' video feed of Earth from space, RAL Space Home.
  4. ↑ Camera features intro, UrtheCast Home.
  5. ↑ Frequently Asked Questions, Urthecast Home.
  6. ↑ "UrtheCast - Your toolbox for global-scale problem solving".
  7. ↑ Russian duo break EVA record – Main task suffers issue, nasaspaceflight.com, 27 December 2013.
  8. ↑ Russian EVA duo install Earth-observing cameras, nasaspaceflight.com, 27 January 2014.
  9. ↑ "Cosmonauts Repeat Spacewalk to Add Earth-viewing Cameras to Space Station".
  10. ↑ "Canada’s UrtheCast Telescopes Now Up And Running - eCanadaNow".
  11. ↑ "UrtheCast Imagery Available". 14 August 2014.
  12. ↑ "Spaceflight Now - Breaking News - UrtheCast says it will be largest commercial ISS user".
  13. ↑ "UrtheCast Acquires Access To TDRSS, Greatly Increases Data Downlink Capacity and Speed".
  14. ↑ "Urthecast video cameras to circle globe - BBC News". Retrieved 2015-06-22.
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