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I am watching the live stream of today(9/1/16)'s spacewalk. The ISS entered a position in space where the video feed was lost, but they are still able to broadcast the audio conversations between the astronauts. How is it possible to only be able to transmit/receive one, and not the other?

(Apologies if this has been asked before, but nothing showed up in the search.)

kim holder
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AaronJPung
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  • Related: https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/16569/do-antennae-on-the-iss-have-to-constantly-move-to-maintain-data-links https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/12296/when-does-the-iss-have-a-loss-of-signal/12301#12301 – Organic Marble Sep 01 '16 at 15:32

1 Answers1

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Edit after being pointed in the right direction by @Organic Marble:

Video goes out over the Ku-band link (which uses a very directional dish antenna), audio goes over a separate S-band link (which looks to be less directional, so less likely to go down).

Hobbes
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