Liftoff On Wireless Space Shuttle Pics

My fascination with the Space Shuttle began at a very young age. When I was a little kid, my family lived in Cape Canaveral, Fla., where watching Shuttle and rocket launches was a regular part of life.

I never gave much thought to how photographers get pictures of the launches, however. It turns out (for obvious reasons) you can't stand near the Space Shuttle when it's blasting off. So photographers set up remote cameras to shoot the launch, then go retrieve them later. This poses a problem for wire services with continuous deadlines, since it can take three hours to go recover a launch camera.

There has to be a better way. During the two recent launches of the Space Shuttle – the Atlantis on Feb. 7 and the Endeavour on March 11 – Reuters experimented with a new way to transmit digital images from remote cameras around the launch site.

Working with technical experts from Canon and Sprint, Reuters placed several digital SLRs with short telephoto lenses near the launch pads. The cameras were rigged to transmit images through the Sprint Mobile Broadband network directly to editors, who put them on the wires within minutes. According to a Reuters spokesperson, a photo taken at the Endeavour launch at 2:28 a.m. (seen here) was received by editors at 2:32 a.m. and then sent to clients at 2:45 a.m.

Needless to say, this kind of wireless camera technology will have applications beyond the Space Shuttle. Good thing, because NASA plans to scuttle the Shuttle in 2010 and has nothing ready to replace it.