Giving everyone the opportunity to explore space by putting a virtual reality camera on the International Space Station!
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Tech Update II: GoPros in SPACE!
over 8 years ago
– Fri, Sep 11, 2015 at 10:25:10 PM
Figure 2 - Photo from the GoPro space walk courtesy of NASA
Space is unforgiving. Between thermal extremes, vacuum, and increased radiation, most consumer electronics will not last long. Astronauts have to take extra laptops to the ISS for this reason. Spacecraft electronics have to be hardened against radiation and extremes of heat and cold.
Which is why the recent NASA spacewalk footage is so amazing. Besides the high-resolution video, a first for a spacewalk[1], the GoPro camera used wasn’t really designed for space. It was designed for adventure. Thanks to that experience, we are confident that the GoPro is the right camera to use in the Overview One. GoPros having a sign-off from NASA and real space heritage goes a long way towards making this project a reality. You do have to replace the GoPro batteries, and we have budgeted for and sourced ITAR certified 2000 mAh space heritage battery packs from Cell-Con (More on that inTech Update V: LiFePO4 Batteries)
Tech updates will be released every 3 days. The next topic… the ISS data bottleneck. You can ask other technical questions in the comments below and on Twitter using the hashtag #AskSpaceVR, which we will answer in our mid campaign Q&A video and Reddit AMA.
Tech Update I: Thermal Analysis
over 8 years ago
– Wed, Sep 09, 2015 at 10:35:17 PM
WOW!!! 24% backed in 24 hours! Earthlings are so amazing!
One of the key factors limiting the operational time for the Overview One is thermal overheating. GoPro cameras have a built-in thermal switch that shuts them down at 43.8 degrees Celsius (See figure 1 below) after approximately 28 mins. To prevent that from happening, five 1.4 CFM (0.040m³/min) DC fans are included in the Overview One design to provide convective cooling, while NASA outgas complaint thermal epoxy (EP42HT-2AO-1 BLACK) provides conductive heat transfer away from the image processing Integrated Circuit (IC) hotspots.
Figure 1 - GoPro thermal shutdown measured by SpaceVR
In order to operate the Overview One for 2 hour spans we designed a simple and robust thermal control system using LISA FEA. This system extended the cameras operational run time by a factor of 4, enabling us to capture our 360 VR high altitude balloon content here. You should check out LISA FEA's YouTube thermal tutorials for your own project.
Tech updates will be released every 3 days. The next topic... Go Pro’s in SPACE!. You can ask other technical questions in the comments below and on Twitter using the hashtag #AskSpaceVR, which we will answer in our mid campaign Q&A video and Reddit AMA.
