STS-99 Record-Breaking Flight for EarthKAM

This is my first field journal since becoming a member of Space Team Online. I work on the EarthKAM project. You can read a little about the background of EarthKAM in a previous STO journal.

EarthKAM, an electronic still camera controlled by middle school students, flew for the sixth time on shuttle flight STS-99. This flight centered on the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), which captured some fantastic radar images of the Earth. While the SRTM was imaging the Earth, EarthKAM was busy taking pictures for a continuous 225 hours (over nine days), capturing 2715 images. This consisted of about 11 gigabytes of data, with all of the data being down-linked within hours of the camera being shut down. More pictures were taken on this mission than on all the other previous missions put together. The largest number of images captured prior to this during one mission was 689, during STS-86. All of the information (images) gathered can be viewed and downloaded from the EarthKAM Web Site listed below.

During the mission, we did have a few hiccups - a few pictures out of focus, a few computer problems - but nothing the crew couldn't quickly fix. During the mission, I worked on console in the TeleScience Center, here at JSC. Overall, STS-99 was a record-breaking flight providing unbelievable coverage, even going online 16 hours early. The entire STS-99 crew really bent over backwards to make EarthKAM a tremendous success on this flight.

As I mentioned earlier, the camera is controlled by middle school students. This is how they do it! Prior to a mission, students train on converting geographic positions to the position of the orbiter as it circles the globe. A command for the image is generated which contains the Mission Elapsed Time or MET for the precise second that the orbiter will be over the geographic location. The image requests from all of the schools participating are compiled into a single camera control file. The camera control file is up-linked to a laptop on the orbiter which in-turn controls when the camera captures the images. This occurs for each orbit! After the pictures are taken, they are downloaded to JSC, where the Digital Imaging Lab makes a copy for the archive. Then the images are sent to the University of California - San Diego (UCSD), which is the EarthKAM Mission Control Center. Once UCSD receives the images, and after Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) does the photo interpretation, they post them up on the Internet and notify the schools that requested the images. These pictures are available for viewing and download from the EarthKAM Web Page.

Check out the mission summary at: http://www.earthkam.ucsd.edu/