LIVE Webcam Feed From the International Space Station

NASA:

NASA Launches International Space Station Webcam Streaming Video

HOUSTON -- Internet visitors can now see the Earth as never before -- live from the International Space Station via streaming video, seven days a week.

The streaming video views of Earth and the exterior structure of the station are from cameras mounted outside the laboratory complex, orbiting Earth at 17,500 miles an hour at an altitude of 220 miles. The video is transmitted to the ground -- and Web viewers -- primarily while the astronauts aboard the complex are asleep, usually from about 1 p.m. to 1 a.m. CST. When live feeds are not available, a map showing the current location and path of the station will be streamed from NASA's Mission Control in Houston.

The streaming video will include audio of communications between Mission Control and the astronauts, when available. When the space shuttle is docked to the station, the stream will include video and audio of those activities.

The International Space Station, a unique partnership between the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada and Europe. Construction began in 1998 and will be completed in 2010. Eighteen crews have lived aboard the orbiting complex since 2000, including the current crew of three. Station residents have conducted important scientific experiments and gathered data to help assist future missions to the moon and Mars.
burdturglersays...

I thought this would be interesting to sift. This is the actual live feed so every time you see this video, it will be different.
Sometimes you can hear them talking to mission control .. it's pretty cool.

siftbotsays...

Self promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Monday, March 16th, 2009 12:51pm PDT - promote requested by original submitter burdturgler.

burdturglersays...

I don't know why .. I tried in Firefox and Ie.
right now it's showing people at their stations in mission control ..

edit .. and lot of chatter with the ISS .. It's awesome listening to them go through each step of whatever procedure they are doing.
They have an announcer that pipes in once in awhile to tell you what will happen next.
If you can't get it to work .. a direct link to the stream is here.
Or if that still doesn't work you can go here and click "External Camera Video" where it says "Live From the ISS" on the left hand side .. that's the feed I'm streaming here.

burdturglersays...

My first question is .. does it work for you?
Not arguing .. Just curious.
This isn't something that is embedable from NASA and I just wanted to bring it here because I thought it was awesome.
Didn't realize it was a windows media embed .. there was no pre-defined embed code to post .. I just stripped it out and posted it. The sift accepted it and it plays fine on my end.

jonnysays...

No, it doesn't work for me because there is no browser on the Mac that can embed windows media. It's a known bug created because Microsoft programmed their hooks for the plugin in a non-standard way. (This info might be out of date.)

Fjnbksays...

I can see it. I'm using Firefox for Windows XP on a Thinkpad.

We're officially Flash only, but I know some videos use Quicktime embeds. I'm not sure about Windows Media Player, though, since it doesn't work on Macs.

burdturglersays...

>> ^jonny:
No, it doesn't work for me because there is no browser on the Mac that can embed windows media. It's a known bug created because Microsoft programmed their hooks for the plugin in a non-standard way. (This info might be out of date.)


That sucks. So you can't see the video even by going to NASA's site then? Shitty.
Well, since I doubt NASA is going to change their live streaming platform anytime soon .. I can make this a sift talk post instead and promote it every week or so .. so the small fraction of viewers with windows based machines can enjoy it .. or you could return it and let it die it's miserable death in my p-queue .. whichever.

People should definitely contact NASA and complain, this material should be as cross platform friendly as possible.
I do think the concept of live feed Sifts is very interesting in any event and this one especially. Sorry you can't enjoy it!

And just a side of awesome .. I got to listen to a wrong "phone call" placed between NASA Mission Control and .. someone (Russian staff aboard the ISS? .. not sure .. these guys never shut up really) while I typed this

jonnysays...

>> ^burdturgler:
That sucks. So you can't see the video even by going to NASA's site then?


It's just the browser plugin that doesn't work. I can still use windows media player if I'm feeling particularly perverted. I'm pretty sure VLC could probably handle it too.

Well, since I doubt NASA is going to change their live streaming platform anytime soon .. I can make this a sift talk post instead and promote it every week or so .. so

How about on your blog? Blog posts can be promoted too, you know.


People should definitely contact NASA and complain, this material should be as cross platform friendly as possible.

I'm kind of surprised - NASA used to be very QuickTime oriented.

burdturglersays...

Why don't you just use VLC then? That's what I use and I am on a Windows based machine. It's like bitching about blocked videos when solutions to get around them exist. Should the blocks exist? Yes .. No .. Whatever .. at the end of the day .. they do exist, and you just want to get to the material. So get it. It's a shame to me that something this awesome gets killed. I'll let others weigh in. When this hangs out in your background for a little while and you start hearing all the communication between the ISS and NASA it becomes addictive and hard to turn off.

This is essentially the same thing as submitting a blocked video. It's available to some people but apparently not others. Blocked videos are allowed so why not this? People get around regional blocks by using VPN's and other means. In the same way, people get around this block by using VLC or the other tools available.

jonnysays...

I can't use VLC inside of VideoSift. I mean, I appreciate that you found this and shared it with us, but the FAQ is pretty clear that video submissions are to be Flash only, specifically because "they are compatible with essentially every type of computer (Mac, Linux, etc.) and web browser."

burdturglersays...

*promote
I feel like this deserves more discussion.

I just watched a guy get his astronaut wings patch live. It's pretty awesome to have this feed here. I don't care if I personally get the votes for it. And yes it sucks that NASA hasn't made this as accessible as it should be, but that's how it is (then again NASA provided no embed links for this in the first place).

The same way it sucks that Comedy Central, Hulu, and many others restrict their content (albeit in a different way) that content is still allowed here even though it is by definition *blocked to many sifters. Obviously we need to be careful about embedded content from a safety/security point of view .. but this is a public feed from the NASA site and I don't see the problem.

arvanasays...

It works fine for me on Ubuntu with Firefox.  Am I to understand correctly that some of you here are still using Windows???

This "video" is extremely cool!  But if it causes compatibility issues then I'd say it should be a blog posting, burd.

paul4dirtsays...

even though this is kinda cool (i onyl hear sound though), this should be blogged not sifted.

i don't think live streams, even if they are submitted in flash format (don't know if that is possible), should be submitted as a video. there's a clear difference between live videos and other videos and it creates a couple problems mixing them together on the sift.

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