Grid-Based Distribution of Payload Video to Experimenters

Distribution of International Space Station (ISS) downlink video to Remote Principle Investigators (RPIs) requires a connection to Abilene, an Internet2 high-performance research network, or a network that peers with Abilene. Additionally, multicast network capability and four megabits per second bandwidth capacity per video channel is required end-to-end in order to receive the downlink video. The Grid Video Distribution System (GViDS) will make ISS downlink video much more accessible to the RPI and NASA center sites by converting the downlink video to lower resolutions, unicast, and widely used commercial-off-the shelf codec formats. Providing this video capability within a grid environment will provide additional flexibility to the experimenter, by supporting the integration of instruments, displays, and computational/information resources. GViDS will be integrated into the MSFC Space-based Science Operations Grid. The GViDS innovation is a cost-effective, flexible, manageable, automated scheme for routing streaming video in a standards-based computational grid environment. Hundreds of ISS users will be involved in distributed mission operations and telescience. NASA telescience operations will benefit from the use of innovative video streaming and grid technology. The successful Internet Protocol-based system will be ?dual-use?: providing both telescience support to the experimenter as well as excellent Web-based education and public outreach.