<story><title>NASA’s Orion spacecraft reaches the moon, flying 81 miles above the surface</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/21/orion-moon-orbit-arrives/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>areoform</author><text>There are some people saying that the onboard cameras are very bad and badly positioned. While the imagery is breathtaking to me, it&amp;#x27;s just a tiny taste of what&amp;#x27;s yet to come — most of the images&amp;#x2F;videos haven&amp;#x27;t been downlinked yet.&lt;p&gt;Orion is the most media consumption focused craft that NASA has ever sent out. There are 16 cameras on the mission, ranging from,&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    — 7 COTS GoPro Hero 4 Black derived cameras that shoot video in, 4k&amp;#x2F;30fps, 1080p&amp;#x2F;120fps, 720p&amp;#x2F;240fps. 4 of these are mounted on tips of the solar panel. Most of the pictures that you are seeing are from these cameras.

    - Cameras around the service module and the Orion capsule that are (mostly, AFAICT) wired cameras derived from PixeLINK PL-D725, these shoot in color and B&amp;amp;W, and record at 75fps on a single channel.

    - 3 internal Cameras that are a part of Callisto a Lockheed Martin thing.
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
On the ground, we&amp;#x27;ve gotten used to fairly high bandwidth communications system, but Orion is using NASA&amp;#x27;s Deep Space Network. There just isn&amp;#x27;t enough bandwidth to downlink the kind of pristine imagery that people want.&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#x27;ll have to wait until the capsule comes back home to watch all of the  4k video that this machine is capturing.&lt;p&gt;We have come a long way though, when the Apollo missions were going on, all they had were grainy TV broadcasts. They had to wait for weeks to get those gorgeous images out.</text></comment>
<story><title>NASA’s Orion spacecraft reaches the moon, flying 81 miles above the surface</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/21/orion-moon-orbit-arrives/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>geuis</author><text>One issue that I really don&amp;#x27;t understand is why the onboard cameras are so bad and are badly positioned.&lt;p&gt;A huge part of this program is to generate buzz and interest in the public about the human space program. A large part of that is pretty pictures, to be honest.&lt;p&gt;The onboard video quality looks like 720p at best and the exposure is for the Orion vehicle, not Earth or the moon. And the video seems horizontally distorted.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d have to look, but I&amp;#x27;m guessing this is an engineering camera meant to primarily view the physical state of the craft.&lt;p&gt;That being said, after billions of dollars to get this thing into space, they should have accounted for the need and benefits of better footage.</text></comment>