It is an exceptionally busy period for the ISS right now, with three new arrivals on 25 September bringing the head count up to nine. “Our ESA astronauts’ schedules are packed with science and technology experiments, ISS operations such as extravehicular activities and maintenance, so finding the slots is difficult,” he says.
Courtenay Taylor can recall only one such mishap in the past 10 years.Ĭommunication and outreach is an important duty for astronauts, says Marco Trovatello at the European Astronaut Centre, but making time for link-ups like these is challenging. Remarkably, it is rare for the connection to fail. “That’s fine – everybody expects there to be a delay,” says Courtenay Taylor. The lag on the pictures at such events is around 5 to 6 seconds, as a result of three sets of satellite transmissions and a conversion between video standards between the US and Europe.
#ANCIENT SPACE STATION ORBITING EARTH TV#
Both are connected by fibre to the main NASA communications hub.įor events in Europe, NASA’s TV desk sends the pictures via a domestic satellite to Toronto, then via a transatlantic satellite to the venue. Signals from TDRS are received at two NASA facilities on Earth: one at White Sands, New Mexico, and one on Guam in the Pacific. The International Space Station orbits the Earth at an average distance of about 400 kilometres, and relies on geostationary satellites for communication with the ground. These have data rates similar to a home fibre internet connection. To maintain the data link, NASA has a small constellation of satellites, known as Tracking and Data Relay Satellites (TDRS), which enable near constant communication between the ground and orbiting satellites. Since the space station crosses the horizon every 4 minutes, it is impossible to track using ground stations. How does the International Space Station communicate with Earth? But setting up the video link and broadcasting live pictures from low Earth orbit is no easy feat. They don’t get to see pictures from the event. When NASA sets up a video link to Earth like at New Scientist Live, astronauts only get to hear the audio side of the call.
0 kommentar(er)
