Russian cosmonauts perform 2nd spacewalk to install Urthecast cameras

Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy are conducting a spacewalk outside the International Space Station this morning, making a second attempt to install cameras for Urthecast — the Vancouver company that will provide live-streaming images of Earth from 370 kilometres above the surface.

The spacewalk began at shortly after 9 a.m. Eastern Time, and will continue for roughly six hours, as the two cosmonauts install the Urthecast cameras on the space station's Russian Zvezda service module. This is the second try at installing the cameras, after the first attempt on December 27th, 2013 ended with the cameras being brought back into the station, to investigate why controllers were receiving no telemetry or data from them.

According to a NASA press release: "The expedition crew members performed troubleshooting on several cable connectors and now believes the problem has been solved."

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Once the cameras are installed and operating properly, Urthecast (pronounced Earth-cast) will offer a free, near-real-time feed of what the cameras see on their website. Users who sign up can subscribe to their favourite places on Earth, and receive updates when new images are available. Premium accounts with the company will offer even more options, like image processing and purchasing time to view specific locations and events.

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