Streaming real-time HD video material from 60,000 feet is a tricky business. But GE engineers have figured it out. Anyone who’s tried to watch TV over the Internet knows that high-quality online videos can get glitchy because computers must constantly buffer the data-rich HD stream. The “Weather Hawk,” however, flies with a GE electronic device called the daq8580. “It is a network-connected box that provides compression for high-definition video from high-up,” says Dan Veenstra from GE Intelligent Platforms.  

When the box receives an HD video frame image from the Global Hawk’s onboard camera, the patented circuits inside the box convert the image into a smaller file – one that’s much less cumbersome to transmit over long distances. The hardware is powerful enough to achieve minimal buffering and can compress video in near real-time.  

As a result the pilot, who controls the aircraft from the ground, can receive live images in less than three quarters of one thousandth of a second. That’s world class. “It allows us to ingest high bandwidth, high resolution video streams from the on-board sensors and compress the data by factors as large as 100:1,” says Don Sullivan, a biospheric science engineer at NASA.