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Shuttle Radar Topography Mission STS-99 - Payload: EarthKAMClick Here for ImageEarthKAM is a NASA-sponsored program that enables middle school students to take photographs of the Earth from a camera aboard the Space Shuttle. During missions, students work collectively and use interactive web pages to target images and investigate the Earth from the unique perspective of space. An electronic still camera (ESC) bracket-mounted to the overhead starboard window of the orbiter aft flight deck will face the nadir to observe various student-selected sites on Earth. Other than equipment setup, initial camera pointing, and possible camera lens changes, no crew intervention is required for nominal operations. The University of California at San Diego houses the EarthKAM Mission Operations Center (MOC). Most participating schools (or group of schools) establish a Student Mission Operation Center (SMOC) whose computers are connected to the Internet for a number of purposes:
How EarthKam Works Before the mission, students select a topic of interest, such as human settlement patterns, mountain ranges, or agricultural patterns. Then they define investigations that will be supported by the EarthKAM images. During the mission, each SMOC submits a number of photo requests through specialized EarthKAM web pages. The requests are processed and uplinked to the EarthKAM ESC aboard the Shuttle. After the ESC takes the pictures, digital images are sent back to Earth and posted on the data system for the students to use in their investigations. For their final reports, students use these new images along with other relevant images from the full EarthKAM image set. Scientists and educators review the original proposal and the final report to provide feedback to the students. The EarthKAM program also is preparing to mount a camera aboard the International Space Station. History/Background During the first four missions of EarthKAM, students took more than 2,000 high-resolution digital images of the Earth. These photographs included the Himalayas, clouds over the Pacific, volcanoes, and recent forest fires in Indonesia. Source: NASA
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