How Middle School Students Tell EarthKAM What to Photograph

EarthKAM is a NASA project that allows middle-school students/classrooms to control a camera that flies on the shuttle or the International Space Station. What I mean by control is that the students send commands to NASA, through the University of California - San Diego, and these commands are then uplinked to the computer that controls the camera, on orbit. Within about four hours of the request, the images are captured and downlinked.

Once the image is captured, the school is notified they can view their requested images on the web. Collectively, the images are national archives, and are available at the EarthKAM website.

Requesting these images is a bit more complicated than just asking for them. The images support investigations the students are accomplishing for research projects, which must be submitted for approval. Once a research project is approved, passwords controlling the image requests are sent to the school. Each image, or picture, requested is of something specific. This specific location must first, be identified in terms of latitude and longitude. Once this is done, the students must go one step further by calculating to the second, the Mission Elapsed Time (MET) for shuttle or Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) for station, that the orbiting vehicle will be over the given point. This is the information they send to NASA to be uplinked to the camera. One orbit around the Earth usually takes about an hour and a half and, with the orbiting vehicle traveling about five miles per second, there's not much room for error.

Depending on which lens is being used, the calculations can be off no more than two to six seconds. Assuming that the vehicle is at 200 nautical miles up, if you are using a 50 millimeter (MM) lens, each image covers an area 127 by 84 miles, allowing a 5 to 6 second window of error. When using the 85MM lens, the area is 75 by 50 miles and can be no more than 3 seconds off. With a 180MM lens, the area is 35 by 23 miles and can be no more than two seconds off. What a cool way to use math and science skills!

Schools from all over the United States, and some globally, are now involved. STS-99 had 83 schools participating, including two in the school district NASA-JSC is located in, four from Japan, two from Germany and one from France.

I sure wish there had been neat stuff like this when I was in middle school. Here is a picture that EarthKAM took showing Galveston Island. This page includes a link to other images taken in and around the area where JSC is located. Has EarthKAM already captured images of the geographical area where you live? Check it out . . .