Last Updated on 05/07/2014 by Chris Gampat
From here on in, we all can experience how it feels like to be in outer space.
Partnering up with a group of high school students from the incredible High Schools United with NASA to Create Hardware (HUNCH) program, NASA has created and recently launched the High Definition Earth Viewing (HDEV) expriment, giving millions, if not billions, of people access to scenes miles outside the Earth’s atmosphere.
This awesome experiment involves four cameras, designed with help from the students, that are attached to the International Space Station (ISS) and pointing towards Earth to give earthbound spectators beautiful HD views of the planet. These cameras, of course, are protected from harsh radiation in space by temperature-specific housing and are also helping NASA engineers analyze the effect of outer space on video quality for future missions.
The experiment, while a success, is still in its infancy and therefore far from perfect. The feed, for example, may go down when it switches from one camera to the next, causing the screen to turn gray for a few minutes. But the breathtaking scenes it captures for us more than makes up for it. Finally, we all can see what those astronauts and cosmonauts have been seeing for decades. And we don’t even have to spend a quarter of a million dollars or watch Gravity or Apollo 13 over and over again for it.
Watch the live feed after the jump.