WATCH: Spectacular Rocket Test Up Close With NASA Camera

First Posted: Aug 09, 2016 04:49 AM EDT
Close

American space agency NASA unveiled its latest creation with a video clip, where it showed the spectacular work of the High Dynamic Range Stereo-X (HiDyRS-X) camera. The organization has described the HiDyRS-X as game changing technology whose camera will help researchers monitor and study rocket engine tests by capturing them at high speed with various forms of exposures at once.

The earlier models of cameras have been able to record only one frame at a time due to the rocket motor plumes' brightness and loudness, therefore most of the major components got obscured in the past. However, now the HiDyRS-X will change all that as it records numerous slow motion video exposures simultaneously, and merges them to create a single high dynamic range video that shows intricate details of test flights.

The test runs for the HiDyRS-X were not without problems though, as twice the outages of two cameras almost sabotaged the results. In the first instance, the automatic timer of the camera did not start during booster ignition, but the camera was quickly started manually by the team. However, following its ignition, the booster started to shake the ground really hard which disconnected the power cable of the camera leading to the recording of only several seconds of footage instead of the two minutes planned. The team were reportedly "bummed" by the short outages, but at the same time everyone in the camera development team were impressed by what they had managed to capture and what it implied for the future of space travel.

"I was amazed to see the ground support mirror bracket tumbling and the vortices shedding in the plume," said Howard Conyers, chief engineer associated with the project. "I was able to clearly see the exhaust plume, nozzle and the nozzle fabric go through its gimbaling patterns, which is an expected condition, but usually unobservable in slow motion or normal playback rates". However, Conyers added that failure in getting the two minutes of planned footage also provided the opportunity to get smarter, as without such glitches technological innovation is not possible.

See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone

©2017 ScienceWorldReport.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The window to the world of science news.

Join the Conversation

Real Time Analytics