By Peter Rakobowchuk, The Canadian Press

MONTREAL - A Vancouver-based company says it should be ready to take videos of big outdoor events on Earth from the International Space Station and put them on the Internet by the end of the year.

Scott Larson, the CEO of Urthecast, says two space cameras one that shoots photos, the other video will be sent up to the station on Oct. 16 on board a Russian spacecraft.

The cameras will be installed on the outside of the football-field-sized station at the end of October and are expected to start rolling a few months later once tests are completed.

"Around the last couple of weeks of December or the first couple of weeks of January is when we'll be able to officially turn stuff on and start showing all the streaming images," Larson told The Canadian Press.

He said there will be about a one-hour delay before the images taken by the space station cameras show up on Urthecast's website, but there will be lots to feast on.

"Anything that's one metre big is what you'll be able to see," he said. "You'll see if there are 10 people together in white shirts in a green field.

"If we decide there's something over a downtown that we want to see, we can point the video camera, hold it for about 90 seconds and then it goes on to the next target."

The cameras will be able to show flash mobs, outdoor events, stadiums, boats and planes, but Larson added that images like people's faces and licence plates will be too small to be visible.

The Urthecast executive also said people will be able to find out in advance when the space station and its cameras will be flying over their area.

Excerpt from:

Cameras set for fall launch to space station and to start streaming by year-end