Columbus Camera
Captures First Views Of Earth
(11 March 2008) One of the experiments housed on the European Columbus laboratory's external platform is an automated eye in the sky known as the Earth Viewing Camera (EVC).
Image from Columbus laboratory's Earth Viewing Camera (EVC) - the first to be produced on command from the ground. The image was taken soon after dawn on 7 March 2008 and shows a scattering of white and pink clouds close to the Aleutian Islands in the north Pacific. (courtesy: ESA/CGS)
Now, after several weeks of troubleshooting
by the EVC team in the Netherlands, the first pictures from the orbiting camera
have arrived safely back on Earth.
The initial image, showing a dimly
illuminated cloud-covered region was successfully downloaded on 6 March. A
second picture - the first to be produced on command from the ground - was
taken soon after dawn on 7 March and shows a scattering of white and pink
clouds close to the Aleutian Islands in the north Pacific.
"It was
really exciting to see the first image arriving from space after the long
period of developing the camera and testing it in orbit," said Massimo
Sabbatini, ESA Principal Investigator for the EVC. "This success would not have
been possible without the major contribution of Carlo Gavazzi Space and the
hard work of the integration and operations teams at the European Space
Technology and Research Centre (ESTEC) in the Netherlands."
First image captured by the European Columbus laboratory's Earth Viewing Camera (EVC). The image was captured at 16:11 on 6 March 2008. EVC is part of the European Technology Exposure Facility (EuTEF) which was installed on the earth-facing side Columbus' external platform during the STS-122 mission. (courtesy: ESA/CGS)
"We are just starting to experiment with the
various camera parameters to adjust for the vast range of lighting conditions
we encounter. That's why the second picture is slightly blurred," explains
Sabbatini. "The ISS is travelling at about 7 km per second, so we have to
adjust the exposure time to compensate for this rapid motion. At that speed the
camera moves over hundreds of metres on the ground in a matter of
milliseconds."
The camera is intended to be a valuable resource for
public outreach and education. Sabbatini says, "We hope to encourage teachers
and students to use the EVC as a tool for studying all aspects of Earth
observation from space - imaging, telemetry, telecommunications links and orbit
predictions. We are also hoping to receive requests for images of particular
regions over which the ISS is passing."
The story of the EVC began in
2003, when the company Carlo Gavazzi Space of Milan, Italy, approached ESA with
a proposal to fly a digital camera as a low cost payload on one of the external
platforms on Columbus. ESA and Carlo Gavazzi Space signed an agreement in March
2004 whereby each partner would provide half of the required funding for the
development of the camera.
Massimo Sabbatini (ESA Principal Investigator) with the Earth Viewing Camera (EVC). EVC was installed on the earth-facing external platform on the European Columbus laboratory during the STS-122 Space Shuttle mission. (courtesy: ESA)
The EVC points continuously at a fixed angle
toward the Earth. The camera weighs 7.8 kg and measures 0.4 x 0.28 x 0.16 m. It
uses a commercial, off the shelf, sensor provided by Kodak, with a 2k x 2k
detector. It is able to capture colour images of the Earth's surface that cover
an area of 200 x 200 km.
The images are received in Europe by the
Columbus Control Centre at Oberpfaffenhofen in Germany and then forwarded to
the ESA User Support Operation Centre in the Erasmus Centre at ESTEC. In the
future, the EVC image acquisition process and exploitation will be co-ordinated
from the EVC User Home Base, also located at the Erasmus Centre.
EVC is
part of the European Technology Exposure Facility (EuTEF) installed on the
European Columbus laboratory's external platform during a spacewalk on 15
February 2008 by NASA astronauts Rex Walheim and Stanley Love.
Located
on the starboard side of the International Space Station, Columbus sweeps
around the Earth once every 90 minutes. Since the Station's orbital path is
inclined at about 52 degrees to the equator, the Earth Viewing Camera has the
potential to take pictures of anywhere on the Earth's surface from England to
the southern tip of South America. This includes almost all of the densely
populated parts of the world.
(source: ESA)
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