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A team from NASA's Langley Research Center will have its eyes,cameras and telescopes trained on the skies for the launch of thefirst commercial spaceflight carrying cargo to the InternationalSpace Station. The SCIFLI (Scientifically Calibrated In Flight Imagery) team,based at NASA Langley, is preparing to capture visual and thermalsnapshots of the SpaceX launch as the Falcon 9 rocket and itsDragon capsule climb through the atmosphere on their way to theISS. The launch is scheduled for Saturday, May 19. The team will have sophisticated optical systems stationed on theground in northern Florida and for the first time ever on board aship, the Freedom Star. The Freedom Star and its sister ship,Liberty Star, originally built to recover space shuttle solidrocket boosters, will also monitor the spacecraft during themission using NASA diagnostic radar systems. Both ships will be off the coast of the northeastern United States.They are normally home ported at the Cape Canaveral Air ForceStation adjacent to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. "We're looking at getting very high spatial resolution, highdefinition quality visual imaging during the launch as well as highspatial resolution thermal imaging from an infrared camera," saidTom Horvath, SCIFLI principal investigator at NASA Langley. NASA contracted with Celestial Computing Incorporated in Boston,Mass., to equip the Freedom Star with a special gyro-stabilizedtracking mount and hardware - turning the ship into a floatinghigh-tech radar, camera and long-range telescope platform. "This ship-based imaging capability is unique," said Horvath. "NASAdoes not possess a shipboard gyro-stabilized tracker with the largeaperture/long focal length optics coupled to state-of-the-artdetectors." NASA will train the two imaging systems at the spacecraft to helpmonitor its performance and capture key events during ascent,including release of the Dragon capsule and solar paneldeployments. This will be the first use of a ship-based high definition visualand infrared imaging system to support Commercial OrbitalTransportation System (COTS) project flights. The COTS project ispart of the Commercial Crew and Cargo Program, led out of NASA'sJohnson Space Center in Houston. This may be the first time NASA Langley has used a ship to try tocapture images of a spacecraft in flight, but it's not the firsttime the SCIFLI team has trained its sites on fast moving objects. The SCIFLI team builds upon the success of what used to be theHypersonic Thermodynamic Infrared Measurements (HYTHIRM) team,which has had a history of capturing challenging thermal images atspeeds as high as Mach 18. The project successfully recorded thespace shuttle heat signature during re-entry on seven differentShuttle missions, using ground and airborne systems. We are high quality suppliers, our products such as Portable Data Terminals , Rugged Tablet PCS for oversee buyer. To know more, please visits Portable Data Collection Terminal.
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