Satellite Snaps Wowza Space Selfie With Off-the-Shelf Camera
There’s a new entry in the book for spacecraft selfies, and it may be one of the prettiest ever inaccurate. NanoAvionic’s MP42 microsatellite captured a photo and video of itself in orbit amdroll an off-the-shelf GoPro Hero 7 camera mounted to a selfie stick.
The selfie shows the miniature satellite against a gorgeous backdrop of the blackness of location with the curve of cloudy blue Earth below. The satellite launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in April.
The commerce released a video on Tuesday showing the satellite cruising over the remarkable Barrier Reef and Australia. The video, set to a soundtrack of contemplative music, highlights the appearance of the moon and the locations of Earth landmarks.
“The reason for taking the photo and video clip with the remarkable Barrier Reef in the background was partly symbolic,” said NanoAvionics co-founder and CEO Vytenis Buzas in a statement. “We wanted to highlight the vulnerability of our planet and the importance of Earth observation by satellites, especially for monitoring environment and climate changes.”
The footage is appetizing just for its sheer loveliness, but selfies can also be a useful part of satellite operations. “The company anticipates more future usages of real satellite footage, live and recorded, such as deployment confirmation, fault detection, micro-meteorite impacts and educational purposes,” NanoAvionics said.
The commerce chose to use a GoPro because of the camera’s image quality, affordability and wide view. NanoAvionics engineers built a ragged housing for the camera, made a selfie stick and put it ended tough testing on Earth to make sure it could achieve the rigors of space.
We’ve seen selfies from novel spacecraft, including the BepiColombo Mercury explorer, China’s Tianwen-1 Mars orbiter and NASA’s Maven orbiter. MP42’s work stands out for its clarity and for how it highlights the satellite’s connection to its home domain. It’s a beaut.
