Journey into space with a balloon and duct tape

[Tom62]

With a budget of £500, Robert Harrison used cheap parts, a weather balloon, some duct tape, a digital camera, and a GPS device to capture some great photos of the earth from space that resulted in NASA calling him to find out how he had done it. 'A guy phoned up who worked for Nasa who was interested in how we took the pictures," said Mr Harrison. 'He wanted to know how the hell we did it. He thought we used a rocket. They said it would have cost them millions of dollars.' The details of his balloon are as follows: he used 'an ordinary Canon camera mounted on a weather balloon', 'free software' that 'reprogrammed the camera to wake up every five minutes and take eight photographs and a video before switching off for a rest.' He also ensured the camera was 'wrapped in loft insulation' to make sure it could operate at the cold temperatures. The GPS device allowed him to pinpoint the balloon's location, and retrieve the camera when it fell down to earth attached to a small parachute."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/s ... 074839.ece

[Whitney]

That's really cool; I like how he outsmarted nasa.  I swear that sometimes the really smart people are so set on solving complicated problems in fancy ways that they forget that simple solutions have their place.

[AlP]

That's awesome. I have a friend at work who was trying to do this. He was trying to source helium a few months ago. His design was exactly the same - weather balloon, camera, GPS, loft insulation. I think there must be a community of people doing this. I'll ask.

[Tom62]

That's awesome. I have a friend at work who was trying to do this. He was trying to source helium a few months ago. His design was exactly the same - weather balloon, camera, GPS, loft insulation. I think there must be a community of people doing this. I'll ask.

I d for "weather balloon photography" and found several links to similar scientific experiments. Here is for example a link to the Southern Alberta Balloon Launch Experiment #3 (SABLE-3) in 2007: http://www.sbszoo.com/bear/sable/sable3.htm.

[theTwiz]

For anyone who is interested, the 'free software' is probably CHDK, a very popular open-source firmware replacement for Canon digital cameras.  It's like the DD-WRT of digital cameras, for you networking nerds out there.

[Jolly Sapper]

Rawk on hacker...  

[mama_ape]

That is one of the funniest and almost unbelievable things I've heard in a while. Almost as good as this dancing banana