Producing a Live HDTV Program from Space

摘要

"Wouldn't it be cool if we could downlink live HDTV from space?" The obvious answer to that question from a 1999 meeting of the NASA Digital Television Working Group was yes, but none of the attendees thought it would take so long to happen. Finally, on November 15, 2006, the first-ever live high-definition television (HDTV) broadcasts from a spacecraft were conducted, one in Japan by the Japan Broadcasting Corporation NHK and the other in the United States (US) by the Discovery Channel. The path to these first HDTV downlinks from the International Space Station (ISS) was arduous and involved many detours along the way. By the year 2000, NASA had flown HDTV camcorders on three Space Shuttle missions: STS-95, STS-93 and STS-99. All three flights of these camcorders were accomplished with cooperation from the Japanese space agency (then known as NASDA and now known as JAXA). The cameras were large broadcast-standard cameras provided by NASDA and flight certified by both NASA and NASDA. The high-definition video shot during these missions was spectacular. Waiting for the return of the tapes to Earth emphasized the next logical step: finding a way to downlink the HDTV live from space.