KWSN Orbiting Fortress

[ToeBee]

I've been watching NASA TV via an online video stream from nasa for the past few days during the shuttle mission. Right now I'm watching an austronaut on a space walk, bouncing up and down on the shuttle's robotic arm trying to determine if it is a stable work platform for repairing damaged tiles or not. Full video is only available while they are in range of of the KU-band (high bandwidth) communications equipment. Other times they have sequential still pictures that update every 5 seconds or so or computer generated simulations of the current position of all the fiddly bits.

Of course the crew is on UTC so they wake up at 2 AM my time (Central US) and do most of their work in the morning. While they are asleep they play recordings of the previous day's highlights as well as overviews of activities planned for the next day. There are briefings, technobabble and orbital display maps. Fun for all!


Anyway, you can watch it at http://www.nasa.gov.

I also extracted the actual stream URL from that page so I can watch it directly in a media player. Sometimes I set the player to be "always on top" so I can watch it as I do other things as I'm doing now. The URL for the windows media player stream is:
http://www.nasa.gov/55644main_NASATV_Windows.asx
although there are others for a quicktime stream and a real player stream.

Maybe I'm just a nerd but I like watching it every once in a while. Maybe there are some other loonies who will enjoy it too!

[Lady DC]

[Sir Robin]

I just noticed these notes on NASA TV, and I too must admit that I watch it periodically. The quality of the images is quite outstanding. The video technology has come such a long way since they filmed the moon landing in that old warehouse.............


Ni!

_________________
We're knights of the round table, we dance whene're we're able.
We do routines, and chorus scenes, and footwork imp-e-cable;
We dine well here in Camelot, we eat ham and jam and spamalot.