NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Release date: 07/01

Dreamtime High Definition Television Camera/Recorder

The deployment of a high definition television (HDTV) camcorder on the International Space Station is part of a public-private NASA partnership with Dreamtime Holdings Inc., Moffet Field, Calif., to upgrade NASA's equipment to next generation HDTV technology. Crew members will use the equipment to acquire a variety of high quality video of the Space Shuttle and the Space Station. They will also gather footage for documentary, future training, historical and educational use. This includes crew activities, Earth observation, and experiment documentation. In addition to the traditional applications of imagery captured in orbit for public information, education and operations, the camera will also be used to capture commercial imagery that may be used for a variety of purposes by NASA's multimedia partner, Dreamtime.

The camcorder is identical to ones that flew on earlier Space Shuttle missions - STS 93 in July 1999 and STS 99 in February 2000. The complement of equipment will include a battery that can be recharged while in orbit.

Experiment Operations

The HDTV equipment will be carried to the Space Station in two of Space Shuttle Atlantis' middeck lockers on the STS-105 mission.

The crew will transfer it to the Space Station, where it will remain until the next ISS Shuttle mission (UF1) which is scheduled for November of 2001. While on the Space Station, the camcorder, video recording tape, and batteries will be stowed in an EXPRESS Rack. The crew has a complete set of procedures to assemble the system, adjust the camcorder, and load the battery and video recording tape.

Astronauts will record activities in accordance with a schedule established before the mission and as requested by mission controllers, as time permits. All recorded tapes and used battery backs will be returned to Earth via the Space Shuttle.

The hardware includes a Sony HDW-700A High Definition Television camcorder, wide-angle lens, battery packs and video recording tapes. Each tape can record up to 40 minutes of video.

Flight History/Background

HDTV equipment has flown previously on the following missions: STS-95 (Oct. 29 - Nov. 7, 1998), STS-93 (July 23 - July 27, 1999) and STS-99 (Feb. 11 - 22, 2000).

NASA personnel used a HDTV camcorder provided by Dreamtime to capture the preparation and launch of the Expedition One crew from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Oct. 31, 2000.

NASA entered into a partnership with Dreamtime in June 2000 to deliver the adventures of the space frontier through new digital technologies. The partnership includes provisions to provide high-definition television coverage of astronaut activities aboard the International Space Station and on Space Shuttle missions. Dreamtime will also create an easily accessible, Web-searchable, digital archive of the best of NASA's space imagery.

Benefits

High-resolution images will provide clearer pictures about life on the Space Station and will improve the documentation of space exploration.

The system will enhance the ability of NASA scientists, researchers and engineers to conduct their research and monitor experiments. The higher resolution imagery provides a significantly greater amount of visual data that will better describe experiment activities.

HDTV will allow the public to experience NASA's explorations more realistically. Dreamtime will use the footage captured by the crews to produce a documentary about life on the Space Station. It and other footage will tell the story of space to audiences around the world.

Investigators will gain insight on the long-term affects of space on HDTV cameras. The camera uses a Charge Coupled Device (CCD) image sensor -- a silicon chip consisting of a rectangular array of light sensitive cells. The image signal produced by the CCD array is then recorded onto magnetic memory. In earlier Space Shuttle missions, the camera's image sensor degraded somewhat -- probably caused by space radiation. The degradation showed up as a loss of several pixels that make up the image. The camera lost between 5 and 15 pixels per day, but the camera is self-correcting up to a loss of about 500 pixels. In correcting them, the camera replaces the bad pixel with an average of the luminance and chroma from adjacent pixels. There is a limit on how often this can be done. If the damage is concentrated in one area it will become noticeable in the camera's video output. Researchers hope to discover if the pixel deterioration condition continues over longer periods of time. Significant data will be obtained from this camera since it will remain on orbit for a longer period of time than any other previous HDTV camcorder.

The NASA-Dreamtime collaboration represents a first step in accomplishing the commercialization goals established by Congress in the Commercial Space Act. Congress asked NASA to conduct an independent market study to help identify potential commercial uses for the U.S. Space Station Program. One of the most promising commercial markets identified by the study was to utilize space imagery in the areas of education and entertainment.

More Information

More information on other experiments is available at:

http://www.scipoc.msfc.nasa.gov/
http://www.spaceflight.nasa.gov/