NanoAvionics satellite pulls out GoPro to take stunning selfie over Earth NanoAvionics has unveiled a 4K satellite selfie taken by a GoPro Hero 7 as the company's MP42 microsatellite flew 550km above the Coral Sea and Great Barrier Reef. Space selfies are hardly new. Buzz Aldrin snapped an image of himself during 1966's Gemini 12 mission, and being able to get a picture of spacecraft can be …
As the owner of a GoPro 7, I'm intrigued to know know how they deal with the constant lockups of the camera. Down here on Earth, the only solution is to physically pull and reinsert the battery - not fun to do on a surfboard or kayak on the ocean, pretty difficult I'd say on a satellite.
They rely on the helpful aliens. Whenever an alien see the battery popping out, they just put their paws on the satellite and manipulate it back in.
That was the deal reached by the US, USSR and aliens that they will never get photographed in exchange for them keeping an eye on the satellites and that the CIA and KGB will keep a blind eye on occassional abductions of civilians from the Earth (but the aliens were kindly asked for sharing the results of their experiments).
At least the camera angle manages to hide the elephants and turtle:
"In a distant and second-hand set of dimensions, in an astral plane that was never meant to fly, the curling star-mists waver and part . . .
Great A'Tuin the turtle comes, swimming slowly through the interstellar gulf, hydrogen frost on his ponderous limbs, his huge and ancient shell pocked with meteor craters. Through sea-sized eyes that are crusted with rheum and asteroid just He stares fixedly at The Destination.
In a brain bigger than a city with geological slowness, He thinks only of the Weight.
Most of the weight is of course accounted for by Berilia, Tubul, Great T'Phon and Jerakeen, the four giant elephants upon whose broad shoulders the disc of the World rests, garlanded by the the long waterfall at its vast circumference and domed by the baby-blue vault of Heaven."
('The Colour of Magic', Copyright 1983 Terry Pratchett)
One thing I'm wondering about - at the beginning of the video when the arm holding the GoPro is deployed, the force of this action makes the satellite pivot backwards and forwards for a few seconds before stabilising. Surely in zero G, without counteracting forces the satellite would simply continue to rotate indefinitely. Has that little beer fridge satellite fuel and position-correcting engines onboard, or is the whole thing simply dangling on a piece of string in somebody's basement with a planet earth video back-projected? And if it's the latter, can I have one of the beers on board?
Yes. But, on the other hand, having watched all those NASA video of spacecraft deploying booms and things in super slow motion, it was still quite a shock to this boom deploy a camera from a tensioned spring and the whole kit and kaboodle proceed to bounce around like a box of frogs!
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