NASA astronaut and Expedition 51 commander Peggy Whitson will tomorrow take viewers 400km above the Earth to the International Space Station (ISS) in the highest resolution video ever broadcast live from space.
Whitson will speak with Sam Blackman, CEO and co-founder of AWS Elemental, via an ultra-high-definition (UHD) broadcast transmitted in 4K from the 2017 National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show in Las Vegas.
In partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), the conversation with Whitson will take place as part of a NAB Show 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.
The live stream will kick off at 13:30 EDT (19:30 CAT) on Wednesday, 26 April and can be viewed at https://live.awsevents.com/nasa4k. The live feed will be encoded with AWS Elemental encoding software on board the ISS and on the ground at Johnson Space Center.
The US space agency is a pioneer in the application of advanced media - including 4K. By streaming real-time video that captures images four times the resolution of current HD technology, NASA is enhancing its ability to observe, uncover and adapt new knowledge of orbital and deep space.
The conversation will include additional panellists: NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson; NASA Imagery Experts programme manager Rodney Grubbs; Bernadette McDaid, head of development, virtual reality and augmented reality at Bau Entertainment; Khawaja Shams, VP of engineering for AWS Elemental; and 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 Web site.
NanoRacks 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.
Whitson on 24 April broke the record for cumulative time spent in space by a US astronaut. She surpassed astronaut Jeff Williams' previous United States record of 534 days, two hours and 48 minutes of cumulative time in space and still has another five months to extend the record before she returns to Earth.
In 2008, she became the first woman to command the space station, and earlier this month became the first woman to command it twice. In March, she also seized the record for most spacewalks by a female astronaut. When she returns to Earth in September, she'll have spent more than 650 days in space, and decades supporting spaceflight from the ground.
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