Qimaging has announced that its Rolera-MGi scientific camera will be launched into space today and is tasked to take pictures of the earth’s coasts and oceans. The company has been known to deliver high-performance yet easy to use digital cameras for scientific and industrial applications and now, a lot rest on what their actual imaging capacity can provide.

These scientific cameras will become part of the Hyperspectral Imager for the Coastal Ocean (HICO), a first hyperspectral space imager optimized for the coastal environments developed by the Naval Research Laboratory. Images will be collected from the International Space Station, aiming to capture up to 8,000 square kilometers of coastal ocean. NASA will transmit the data to the NRL, which will then distribute the images with the help of The Oregon State University and other collaborating institutions.

(Source) Press