High Definition Earth Viewing (HDEV) cameras were a payload package delivered to the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is a large space station that was Assembly of the International Space Station, assembled and is maintained in low Earth orbit by a collaboration of five space agencies and their contractors: NASA (United ...

on the SpaceX CRS-3 Mission, launched on April 18, 2014. The High-Definition Earth Viewing camera suite was carried aboard the

Dragon spacecraft Dragon is a family of spacecraft developed and produced by American private space transportation company SpaceX. The first variant, later named Dragon 1, flew 23 cargo missions to the International Space Station (ISS) between 2010 and 2020 be ...

and is configured on a platform on the exterior of the

European Space Agency The European Space Agency (ESA) is a 23-member International organization, international organization devoted to space exploration. With its headquarters in Paris and a staff of around 2,547 people globally as of 2023, ESA was founded in 1975 ...

's Columbus laboratory module. It was the first large unpressurized NASA experiment to be assigned for delivery to the International Space Station by

SpaceX Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly referred to as SpaceX, is an America, American space technology company headquartered at the SpaceX Starbase, Starbase development site in Starbase, Texas. Since its founding in 2002, the compa ...

. The system is composed of four commercial high definition video cameras which were built to record video of the Earth from multiple angles by having them mounted on the International Space Station. The cameras streamed live video of Earth to be viewed online and on NASA TV on the show Earth Views. Previously-recorded video now plays in a continuous loop on public streaming sites. The HDEV system was developed by engineers at the

Johnson Space Center The Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) is NASA's center for human spaceflight in Houston, Texas (originally named the Manned Spacecraft Center), where human spaceflight training, research, and flight controller, flight control are conducted. ...

in Houston, Texas. High school students also helped design some of the cameras' components, through the High Schools United with

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

to Create Hardware program, and teams of students were expected to remotely operate the experiment. The system is configured on the Columbus – External Payload Facility, which is a platform on the exterior of the European Space Agency's Columbus laboratory module where it was used to perform experiments to help NASA determine which cameras work best in outer space. The cameras are enclosed in a temperature-specific housing and exposed to the harsh radiation of space. The German educational projec
"Columbus Eye – Live Imagery from the ISS in Schools"
which is executed by the

University of Bonn The University of Bonn, officially the Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (), is a public research university in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the () on 18 October 1818 by Frederick Willi ...

and is funded by the

German Aerospace Center The German Aerospace Center (, abbreviated DLR, literally ''German Center for Air- and Space-flight'') is the national center for aerospace, energy and transportation research of Germany, founded in 1969. It is headquartered in Cologne with 3 ...

(DLR), aims at the implementation of the ISS live imagery and videos in a web portal. It primarily acts as a learning portal for pupils, but also serves as a free access archive for the footage of the ISS HDEV cameras. Columbus Eye accompanied the ISS mission of the German ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst (May to November 2014). On August 22, 2019, the experiment reached its end of life. Originally expected to operate 1 to 3 years, it continued for over 5 years, attaining over 318 million views. The HDEV system was removed from the Columbus module on May 7, 2020, and transferred into the Cygnus NG-13 resupply spacecraft for disposal via destructive re-entry at the end of its mission. Following HDEV end of life, two of the International Space Station External High Definition Cameras (EHDCs) have been used to provide video to the HDEV live feed. The Node 2 Zenith EHDC was used until the installation of the S3 (Starboard 3) Aft EHDC.

References

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External links

NASA: HDEV Website
(experiment details)
University of Bonn & DLR: Columbus Eye WebsiteHDEV Final Report
SpaceX payloads contracted by NASA Spacecraft launched in 2014 Spacecraft decommissioned in 2019 International Space Station Space photography and videography Streaming Satellite video

See also

References

External links