posted 04-11-2017 09:13 AM               

NASA Astronaut to Star in First Ultra-High-Definition Live Stream from Space

NASA astronaut and Expedition 51 commander Peggy Whitson will take viewers 250 miles off the Earth to the International Space Station in the highest resolution video ever broadcast live from space at 1:30 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, April 26.

During this event, Whitson will speak with Sam Blackman, chief executive officer and co-founder of AWS Elemental, via an ultra-high-definition (UHD) broadcast transmitted in 4K from the 2017 National Association of Broadcasters Show in Las Vegas. Watch Amazon Web Services' live stream of the event here.

The conversation with Whitson will take place as part of a panel called "Reaching for the Stars: Connecting to the Future with NASA and Hollywood." The panel will explore how advanced imaging and cloud technologies are taking scientific research and filmmaking to the next level, and will be moderated by Carolyn Giardina, technology editor for the Hollywood Reporter.

Additional panelists are:

• NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson
  
• Rodney Grubbs, NASA Imagery Experts program manager
  
• Bernadette McDaid, head of development, virtual reality and augmented reality at Bau Entertainment
  
• Khawaja Shams, vice president of engineering for AWS Elemental
  
• Dave McQueeney, senior principal investigator for the IBM Watson Group

To experience the full effect online, devices capable of viewing 4K UHD content will be required, however, lower resolution streams of the live broadcast will be available on NASA Television, NASA's Facebook page and the agency's website.

NanoRacks, a provider of commercial access to the International Space Station through its status as a U.S. National Laboratory, helped certify for launch a UHD-capable video encoder from AWS Elemental. The encoder and a RED Epic Dragon Digital Cinema camera were delivered to the station aboard a Japanese cargo craft in December 2016.

posted 04-26-2017 10:45 PM               

NASA returns first RED camera from orbit, demos first live 4K video from space

NASA has given new definition to the old saying, "what goes up must come down."

The U.S. space agency presented two high-definition firsts on Wednesday (April 26), producing the first-ever live 4K video from orbit and returning the first ultra-high definition camera to be used aboard the International Space Station to the company behind it.

"What goes up must come down, except when what goes up goes into outer space," said Sam Matheny, executive vice president and chief technology officer of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), on Wednesday at the organization's annual show in Las Vegas. "And that is what makes the first RED camera to go to the space station so special."