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→ noDDinG meChAniSm on The iSS A picture of our planet at night illuminates certain issues more than sunlight can. In fact, it is in the dark that our otherwise invisible impact suddenly becomes apparent: artificial light. A worldwide, high-resolution map of manmade light is a completely original concept, and would allow its effect on the environment to be examined in detail. Putting together this map from aboard the ISS is no small feat, however. The size of a football field, it travels at 7 km/s while continuously oscillating back and forth. In light of these extraordinary circumstances it followed that dedicated technology needed to be developed to obtain photographs without smear. With the support of GSTP and the participation of NL and DE, the Nodding Mechanism was developed to meet this need. Developed especially with ESA astronaut André Kuipers’ PromISS mission in mind, the Nodding Mechanism is an electro-mechanical system that lets the astronaut take exceptionally sharp pictures of the Earth at night from inside the ISS Cupola. A Nikon 3DS camera is mounted facing the down-looking window, and rotates to counteract the ISS’ orbital motion, allowing for a much longer integration time. Before the Nodding Mechanism, even the very best night pictures taken from the ISS could only boast resolutions of 30-50m/pixel. Although still aesthetically pleasing, they are not of a high enough quality for scientific use due to the poor signal-to-noise ratio. This is because they are achieved by keeping integration times low (1/60s) while maximizing detector gain. To compare, the Nodding Mechanism is now being used to observe manmade structures (e.g. cities, roads, sea establishments), vegetation and volcanic activity, which it does at an unprecedented resolution of about 15m/pixel. In total, the Nodding Mechanism took less than 6 months to develop and was launched for the ISS on December 21st 2011. It has two operating modes: automatic and manual. Automatic mode is designed to create super-resolution maps of the Earth’s night-time surface, while manual mode gives the astronaut the power to “point and shoot” at single targets seen from the Cupola’s nadir window. 16 | GSTP Annual Report 2011 The Netherlands from the ISS They can do this because, aside from the three main pointing axes, the Nodding Mechanism was developed with an additional fourth axis to enable the camera to be directed at off-track sites. Among the targets captured are Amsterdam, London, Melbourne and Naples – Naples taken with an impressive shot of the Vesuvius Volcano. The European User Community Earth Observation of Nighttime Lighting is already delighted with the first Nodding Mechanism results, and is now looking forward to seeing an enhanced version capable of delivering even more valuable scientific returns. > The Nodding Mechanism installed on a mock-up of the European Cupola observatory
Europe seen by André Kuipers onboard the ISS 17 | GSTP Annual Report 2011
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Page 3 and 4: • The best way to predict the fut
Page 5 and 6: A GSTP Production A. Tobías U. Bec
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Page 11 and 12: memS rate Sensor Phase 2 The develo
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