Livestream from Earth: video from the International Space Station

Here’s a livestream video you may want to check in on from time to time. As Space.com describes, it’s from the ISS:

Cameras are officially rolling! Or, in this case, streaming.

SpaceTV-1, a set of Ultra High Definition 4k cameras from space streaming company Sen, was delivered to the International Space Station (ISS) last year, and is now broadcasting live views of Earth and space for all the world to see.

The London-based company is pursuing a mission to provide anyone and everyone with easy access to an experience usually reserved for astronauts — the overview effect. A phenomenon coined for the awe of seeing our planet from space and the effect it has on a person’s perception of humanity, Apollo 14‘s lunar module pilot NASA astronaut Ed Mitchell described the overview effect as, “an instant global consciousness,” accompanied with “an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world and a compulsion to do something about it,” and Sen wants that for everybody.

. . . The SpaceTV-1 camera suite was delivered to the ISS in March, 2024, aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft on the CRS-30 cargo mission last year. SpaceTV-1 was attached to the Bartolomeo platform on the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Columbus module. The package includes three cameras, providing three unique views of space around the ISS and Earth below.

A wide angle lens captures the long curve of Earth’s horizon, with the occasional piece of the space station moving in and out of frame. A tighter view focuses directly on Earth, showing a stretch about 150 miles x 110 miles (240 kilometers x 180 kilometers). The third camera looks at the space station’s forward docking port, connected the the Harmony module.

It’s very easy to get mesmerized by the video, but you can always keep it in the background of your computer screen (there are some replays as there is signal loss when the ISS is on the other side of Earth from the receiver, but there are also helpful descriptions at the bottom of the screen. It is a YouTube video.

Sunrise is very soon!

h/t: Ginger K.