Felix & Paul Studios and TIME Studios Partner with Nanoracks to Deliver Customized Space Camera to the International Space Station

Canadarm2 and Nanoracks Deployer to Function Together as “Space Crane” to Capture First Spacewalk Filmed in Immersive Virtual Reality

Montreal, Canada, New York, NY and Houston, TX – October 5, 2020 – Felix & Paul Studios, the EMMY-award winning creator of immersive entertainment experiences, TIME Studios, TIME’s EMMY-award winning television and film division, and Nanoracks, the leading provider of commercial access to space, today announced the successful delivery of Felix & Paul Studios’ customized 3D, 360-degree, Space Camera to the International Space Station via the NG-14 Cygnus spacecraft, the S.S. Kalpana Chawla. The Space Camera will be used to capture the first-ever spacewalk filmed in cinematic virtual reality as the culmination of Space Explorers: The ISS Experience, produced by Felix & Paul Studios and TIME Studios. 

“An immersive series titled ‘The ISS Experience’ would not be complete without taking viewers along for the ultimate ride: a spacewalk outside the International Space Station side by side with two real astronauts,” said Félix Lajeunesse, co-founder of Felix & Paul Studios and Emmy-winning creative director of the Space Explorers series. “Our Space Camera, purpose-built to capture this historic event in fully-immersive 3D, brings us one step closer to our goal of taking billions of minds to space, and having them experience a spacewalk as if they were astronauts themselves.”

Felix & Paul Studios’ state-of-the-art Space Camera – a Z-Cam V1 Pro camera consisting of nine 4K sensors allowing for a 3D, 360-degree image at 8K resolution – has been specially hardened by Nanoracks to withstand the harsh conditions of low atmosphere orbit, including vacuum, solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation, charged particle (ionizing) radiation, plasma, surface charging and arcing, temperature extremes, thermal cycling, impacts from micrometeoroids and orbital debris (MMOD), and environment‐induced contamination.  

The Space Camera can store approximately 15 hours of 3D, 360-degree footage with custom lenses made to withstand extreme light and heat to minimize flare when directly exposed to the Sun. The International Space Station travels at 17,100 miles per hour with 16 sunrises and sunsets per day and external temperatures ranging from -250° F to +250° F. 

“Getting this camera to space was the culmination of five years of exceedingly hard work. Only 228 humans have ever conducted a spacewalk. It is one of the most thrilling yet perilous tasks an astronaut can undertake,” said Jonathan Woods, Executive Producer for The ISS 

Experience at TIME Studios and Emmy-winning producer of A Year in Space. “When I first reached out to pitch this idea to NASA in 2016, my goal was to spare viewers on Earth the perilous part while allowing them to enjoy the thrill by filming the first-ever spacewalk in Virtual Reality. Thanks to the efforts of hundreds of people around the world, working in collaboration with the brilliant Felix & Paul Studios, NASA, Nanoracks and the ISS National Lab, the VR experience that results will have made all of the work very much worth it.”

Nanoracks’ expertise in EVA satellite deployment systems enabled them to design a hermetically sealed, radiation resistant aluminum shield enclosure for the Space Camera, built to last up to a minimum of 7 days in the environment of space.  An active heating system as well as a passive cooling system were also integrated into the enclosure to manage the internal camera system’s temperature fluctuations. 

“This may well be one of the most complex and exciting projects that we have ever worked on at Nanoracks,” says Conor Brown, Senior Manager of Nanoracks Program Office. “We’re seeing creative commercial utilization of the ISS in full force – leveraging our platform built for deploying satellites and converting it into a VR camera mount that can be robotically manipulated to follow along with a spacewalk like never before. We are beyond excited to play such a pivotal role in bringing perhaps the most adventurous and extreme activity a human being can ever do to viewers all over the world.”

To capture the spacewalk featured in Episode 4 of The ISS Experience, the Space Camera will be mounted and powered via the Nanoracks’ Kaber MicroSatellite Deployer and maneuvered around the outside of the International Space Station by Canadarm2, the Canadian robotic arm on the ISS. Canadarm2 will essentially function like a crane on a movie set, enabling the Space Camera to capture the spacewalk in fully-immersive virtual reality, bringing viewers alongside the astronauts as if they were part of the crew. 

Stills of the Space Camera can be found here. The first two episodes of the Space Explorers series – Space Explorers: A New Dawn and Space Explorers: Taking Flight – are available in fully-immersive virtual reality on the Oculus Store. 

About Nanoracks

Nanoracks LLC, an XO Markets company, is the world’s leading provider of commercial space services. Nanoracks believes commercial space utilization will enable innovation through in-space manufacturing of pharmaceuticals, fiber optics – and more, allow for revolutionary Earth observation, and make space a key player in finding the solution to Earth’s problems.

Today, the company offers low-cost, high-quality solutions to the most pressing needs for satellite deployment, basic and educational research, and more – in over 30 nations worldwide. Nanoracks’ future goals are focused on the re-purposing of the upper stages of launch vehicles in-space and converting these structures into commercial habitats, both humanly and robotically tended, throughout the solar system.

XO Markets, the world’s first commercial space holding company, includes Nanoracks LLC, Nanoracks UAE, and wholly owned subsidiaries DreamUp and Nanoracks Space Outpost Europe (Nanoracks-Europe).

About Felix & Paul Studios

Felix & Paul Studios is an EMMY® Award-winning creator of immersive entertainment experiences, creating unparalleled, highly engaging and inspired virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality experiences for audiences worldwide.

Felix & Paul Studios combines a patent-pending technology platform with award-winning creative expertise to produce groundbreaking immersive experiences, including:

• Collaborations with world-renowned leaders and performers: NASA, SpaceX, President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, LeBron James, President Bill Clinton, Eminem, Wes Anderson, Brie Larson, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Murray and many others.
• Originals: The Space Explorers series, Traveling While Black, MIYUBI, the Nomads series, Strangers with Patrick Watson and The Confessional series; and
• Productions with existing franchises: Jurassic World, Cirque du Soleil and Fox Searchlight’s Wild and Isle of Dogs.

The studio’s content is available for distribution in a range of immersive formats including 360-degree mobile on 5G-enabled smartphones and tablets, 360-degree fulldome projection in domes and planetariums, fully-immersive virtual reality (VR) on Oculus headsets, and the touring life-scale immersive exhibit,∞INFINITY, coming in 2021. A groundbreaking augmented reality (AR) experience is also in production. Felix & Paul Studios is the only media company recognized as an “Official Implementation Partner” by the ISS U.S. National Laboratory.  

About TIME Studios  

TIME Studios is the EMMY® Award-winning television and film division of TIME, the global media brand that reaches a combined audience of more than 100 million around the world. 

Built on the foundation of TIME’s award-winning visual journalism, which has earned over 54 major awards and nominations in the last seven years, as well as 577 million video streams 

across all platforms in 2019, Emmy-winning TIME Studios harnesses the access and authority of one of the world’s most trusted and respected brands to bring premium truth-based programming to television and film around the world, while continuing to push the boundaries of journalism and visual storytelling through new cutting-edge mediums including virtual reality and augmented reality.