There are not very many imaging environments more challenging than the one that supports launches at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Imaging data, which include video taken at speeds of up to 1,000 frames per second, weigh in today at around 200TB per mission and must be available at multiple NASA centers as rapidly as possible.

Upgrading Performance, Access, and Capacity

The original imaging system started with tape or photographic film that had to be rushed out of state for development and digitization.

“It would take two days to get the film processed and available as a file, so the NASA team could analyze the high-res slow-motion footage,” explains Jeff Wolfe, Communications System Engineer at Abacus Technology, the NASA contractor for imaging services. “The asset management system we had at Kennedy could not handle the complete process because it was really more suited to documents than to video and image data. It meant that access to the image data was delayed.”