UrtheCast’s Ultra HD video camera installed on the ISS [video]

I got curious about how a company had done a deal to put a camera on ISS and sell the pictures for profit so I started Googling. It looks like they basically did a deal with RSC Energia and the Russian Federal Space Agency. However, what's far more interesting is what I found out about how UrtheCast raised the money to make this happen.

UrtheCast started out as a privately-held (i.e. pre-IPO) startup company called Earth Video Camera Inc (EVC). EVC raised C$4.5m in 2012 but the bulk of its funding came last year when it completed a reverse takeover of a publicly-traded company called Longford Energy.

Longford used to be an oil and gas exploration firm but in 2012 it sold its sole remaining asset (a 40% share of an oilfield in Iraq) and ended up with a pile of cash ($25m) but no operating business or significant assets. Instead of returning the cash to the shareholders (which would presumably have incurred dividend taxes), Longford's management decided to pursue "acquisition opportunities"[1]. However, a couple of hedge funds got involved and convinced the other Longford shareholders that they'd do a better job than the existing management team who were duly fired and replaced with the hedge funds' team[2].

Six months later, EVC and Longford announced[3] the reverse takeover, which was duly completed in June last year - Longford "acquired" EVC by issuing shares in Longford to UrtheCast's shareholders. Normally, that sort of deal involves a larger company acquiring a smaller one but, in this case, EVC was valued at nearly three times Longford, so EVC shareholders ended up owning three quarters of Longford. The EVC management team took over running the combined company and changed the company name to UrtheCast. The $25m effectively became an investment in UrtheCast by Longford's original shareholders.

Reverse IPOs (where the company that wants to IPO is "acquired" by a shell company that already has a public listing) like this aren't unusual (it's a way of bypassing all the hassle that usually accompanies an IPO) but it's the first time I've heard of it being combined with what amounts to an investment round.

[1]: http://business.financialpost.com/2012/07/12/longford-energy...

[2]: http://business.financialpost.com/2012/08/13/longford-energy...

[3]: http://www.newswire.ca/en/story/1138175/urthecast-to-complet...

Here's an interview from a couple years ago with one of the founders of Urthecast about the cameras, the partnerships, and the business model: http://www.sensorsandsystems.com/dialog/interviews/27327-urt...

It's a great interview if you are looking for details on the technical details of the project. Here's a sample:

  GT: There are two cameras. One is a classic, push-broom,   
  medium-resolution, four-band imager. It is built for space 
  with our partner Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL). 
  They had this camera available, it could be built 
  relatively inexpensively, it isn’t particularly large, and 
  it is made for space, so it became a good fit. At the 
  altitude at which the space station flies it gives you a 
  5.5 meter pixel size on the ground or ground sampling 
  distance (GSD).

  The other thing that made this project possible is that 
  RSC Energia and Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, had 
  already decided to experiment with a camera on the ISS. 
  They had defined the experiment, rolled it all up, and 
  obtained the approval of all the partners, but had not 
  decided what the camera would be. So, when we came along, 
  they loved the idea, and they already had, essentially, a 
  programmatic way to enable it immediately. They had also 
  developed a very high accuracy pointing platform that can 
  point to plus or minus 175 degrees in each of two axes, 
  which means that you can steer it to track a point on the 
  ground. You can also flip it up and look at space targets. 
  Once this project got traction with them — and they liked 
  it a lot — they had a competition to decide who would get 
  to use their pointing platform. We participated and they 
  decided to give the platform to our project. We are very 
  happy about that. That’s what enabled the video cam.

  We are typically able to track a spot on the ground for a 
  minute and a half and take video or images. To make it 
  work and get good resolution you need to have that kind of 
  pointing system. To build it from scratch would have been 
  quite expensive. The video camera has an aperture of 32 
  centimeters, so it is essentially an astronomy telescope. 
  It was built by an American company and over the past year 
  has been ruggedized, so that it is suitable for space. The 
  manufacturer already had the parts for this telescope 
  because they built one for another customer and had some 
  spare parts that we were able to buy right away. We were 
  able to put it on a test stand to check it for vibration 
  and work out whether it was possible to make it suitable 
  for space, which we confirmed last summer. So, very 
  quickly that gave us a telescope of the right size and 
  performance and at the right price point for our project. 

  As for the detector, we are are using a commercial 18 
  MegaPixel detector from a professional grade DSLR camera 
  that we have radiation tested to ensure it will work in 
  space. The camera electronics is built by RAL, who are 
  leveraging their extensive know-how and technology they 
  have developed for the numerous other optical instruments 
  they built for space. There is nothing really special 
  about the technology, other than that we couldn’t do a 
  NASA-style development costing many tens of millions of 
  dollars. It is a commercial project and it has to be 
  affordable.

While watching the stream, I was surprised to hear the translator mention a GoPro camera. Sure enough, each of the cosmonauts has one strapped to his forearm. That's pretty cool to see consumer-grade technology attached to a spacewalk.

Via G+[1]:

International Space Station Expedition 38 Commander Oleg Kotov and Flight Engineer Sergey Ryazanskiy of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) began a planned 6-hour spacewalk from the Earth-facing Pirs Docking Compartment at 9 a.m. EST.

Kotov is performing his sixth spacewalk. This is Ryazanskiy's third spacewalk. Both cosmonauts are wearing Russian Orlan suits with blue stripes. Their suits are equipped with NASA helmet cameras to provide close-up views of the work they are performing outside the station. Kotov's helmet camera displays the number 18, and Ryazanskiy's displays the number 20. The duo also will be wearing a GoPro cameras on their forearms. Kotov will have a single strip of yellow tape around his GoPro camera, and Ryazanskiy will have two strips on his camera.

This is the 178th spacewalk in support of space station assembly and maintenance.

The spacewalking duo's task is to attempt again to install a pair of high fidelity cameras on a platform attached to the Zvezda Service Module as part of a commercial arrangement between Roscosmos and a Canadian company to downlink Earth observation imagery. During their previous spacewalk on Dec. 27, Russian flight controllers were unable to receive telemetry from the cameras and instructed the spacewalking cosmonauts to bring the cameras back inside the Russian airlock. While outside the orbiting complex, Kotov and Ryazanskiy also plan to retrieve an experiment package housed on Zvezda's hull.

Flight controllers at the Mission Control Center in Korolev, outside of Moscow, are providing primary support for the spacewalk and coordinating with Mission Control at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

NASA Television is providing live coverage of the spacewalk at http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv

[1] https://plus.google.com/+NASA/posts/YJ1i1L2nvY8

I know this is very much offtopic, but at first read I thought this said "UrethraCast" - which might be of use in the medical industry, I suppose.

Here you can find more about the installation. It's happening right now.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/russian-cosmonauts-to-make-2nd-a...

I really hope it is going to be a first-person view from an astronaut. First person view!

Commentator mentioned the installed camera could be used by subscribers.

More details:

http://mashable.com/2013/12/04/international-space-station-c...

http://www.urthecast.com/features#coverage

So if the feed is free on Urthecast's website, how does the company expect to make money? With a premium service, of course. Corporate clients might want the cameras pointed at a prospective mining site; the UN has already inked a deal with the company to help document disasters.

It's surprisingly interesting seeing the astronauts working from first person view and hearing their communication. Reminds me a lot of the beginning scenes of Gravity, goes to show how well that movie was shot.

They mentioned they are now about 30 minutes into a 6 hour space walk.

They are currently over Hongkong/South East Asia, where it is night time.

Too bad, the background with earth lit up would have been awesome ...

Edit: In about 15 minutes, they are expecting orbital sunrise. That would be great !!!

I'm curious what the life expectancy of this imager will be. My understanding is that run-of-the-mill DSLRs get about 4-6 months before high speed particles turn the sensor into a grid of random noise.

This is absolutely fascinating. I can't wait to see the imagery but at least from the samples (even though they state its a simulation) will it be any more interesting that what we see from google's satellite imagery?

Also, when will the camera be operational and online so we can watch? I can't find any information on their actual website about this.

The NASA TV stream seems to be preferable - same video but with commentary and background:

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/

This sounds really cool, I don't know how I did not hear about this so far.

Any word on what the cost of getting a camera up to the space station (and getting it installed) actually is?

Awesome. Imagine if we had a HD camera on every gps satellite and were capable of creating a full 3D texture of the earth in real time.

Any commentary on the business plan for this company? Outside of the free options, are they targeting media groups that might want on demand imagery of evolving news events? It seems like you can pay for the right to have a 30 second ability to direct and capture from the camera? Is it exclusive? e.g. "Here's MSNBC's exclusive footage of the evolving protests in the Ukraine, captured from the ISS..."

I always marvel at businesses like this because of the number of barriers they had to get over to literally launch. Build an app and put it on the Play store....or build a space-ready high resolution camera and coordinate its launch and deployment on the ISS?

As one light aside, the mission control person sounds like Téa Leoni in Deep Impact.

Anyone got the specs of the camera?

First camera is installed and working. Now they're working on the second.