New Earth-eyeing cameras getting a lift to space station today

Easy access to satellite imagery through things like Google Earth was revolutionary in many ways. But at the risk of being incredibly greedy, wouldn’t it be nice if you could see pictures that were no more than a few days old? That’s the idea behind the UrtheCast project—they’re putting a pair of cameras on the International Space Station that will feed fresh pictures back to Earth, accessible through the UrtheCast website.

One camera will sweep the Earth’s surface as the ISS passes overhead, capturing five-meter resolution images along the way (between 51°N and 51°S latitude). The other will actually shoot video at one-meter resolution and can be pointed at areas of interest. To some extent, this will be freely accessible, but UrtheCast is also marketing specialized imagery to corporate and government entities.

The cameras are scheduled to be carried to the ISS by a Russian Soyuz rocket on Monday, launching at 3:53 EST/12:53 PST. UrtheCast is hosting a livestream of the launch here.