A few HD cameras were recently delivered to the International Space Station, and they’re all set to start streaming live images from space.

The cameras lenses are strong enough to see vehicles and crowds.

The cameras were created by Urthecast, a Canadian company that plans to start its free broadcast in early 2014. The cameras can see everything from 51 degrees north to 51 degrees south.

Unfortunately, that excludes Alaska, Scandinavia, and most of the UK. But everyone else will be able to see their neighborhood drift by in surprisingly high resolution.

And if you miss seeing your neighborhood on the display, don’t fret. The ISS circles the globe 19 times a day.

The only drawback is the sheer size of the data stream. Urthecast expects to stream 200GB of pictures and videos from the ISS every day. Which is why the feed is only “near live” — there’ll be a delay of 45 minutes to two hours before the images actually show up on your screen.

[Source : Mashable]