Urthecast
 |
|
| Public | |
| Traded as | : UR |
| Industry | Internet |
| Headquarters | Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada |
|
Area served
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Worldwide |
|
Key people
|
Wade Larson (President and CEO) Dr. Sergei Bedziouk (Vice President) Dr. George Tyc (CTO) Issa Nakhleh (CFO) |
| Products |
Remote sensing Geospatial information |
| Revenue | $41.1 million (2015) |
| Website | UrtheCast |
UrtheCast is a Vancouver-based Canadian company that will distribute the operational software for the first publicly accessible high definition cameras installed on the International Space Station. The company went public on the in June 2013.
The camera systems to be operated by UrtheCast are part of an international project involving several nations, primarily Russia (through the Russian Space Agency), Canada and the United Kingdom. The UrtheCast service will be accessible online and will allow users to access the two UrtheCast cameras from their homes to examine places or events. One medium resolution and one high resolution camera have been built by the British Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL). The resolution on the ground is given as 5.5 m (18 ft) for medium resolution and 1.1 m (3 ft 7.2 in) for high resolution.
The UrtheCast platform utilizes some measure of open source coding. The company held a contest for the naming of cameras, with "Iris" as the chosen name.
The cameras were delivered to the ISS on the Progress M-21M (Progress 53P) cargo spacecraft, which docked with the station on 29 November 2013. On 27 December 2013, an attempt was made to install the cameras on the Russian Zvezda module of the ISS, during a spacewalk by Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazansky, which also broke the record for the longest Russian spacewalk ever. A problem occurred that prevented the cameras from properly transmitting telemetry data, so the installation was not completed and the cameras were taken back inside the space station. A second attempt to install the cameras, by the same pair of spacewalkers, was made on 27 January 2014. The high resolution camera was successfully installed. The second of the two cameras, the medium-resolution unit, did not send any telemetry. The delay installing the pair of cameras is not expected to hold up UrtheCast's plans. It was reported later on that they were able to resolve the connectivity issues so that as of this time, both cameras are installed.
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Wikipedia