DIY Space Photography

Four Spanish teenagers sent a camera-operated weather balloon into the stratosphere. The boys built the electronic sensor components from scratch. Gerard Marull Paretas, Sergi Saballs Vila, Marta Gasull Morcillo and Jaume Puigmiquel Casamort attached a £56 camera to a heavy duty £43 latex balloon, and sent their science project 20-miles above the Earth. Team leader Gerard Marull, 18, said, "We were overwhelmed at our results, especially the photographs, to send our handmade craft to the edge of space is incredible."

Comments

SABLE-3 did it on August 11/07 - 117,597ft/ 35850m

[dan of the north]

"SABLE-3 was launched on Saturday, August 11th, 2007, at 9:31 AM with a payload, consisting of a Nikon Coolpix P2 digital camera set to take 1 image every minute and a Byonics MicroTrak 300 APRS Tracker, that the Kaysam 1200 gram balloon carried to over 117,597 feet. The last payload camera photo from the ground was just before it was launched, at 9:31 AM, and the last photo before the balloon burst was the photo above, at 12:01 PM, exactly 2.5 hours or 150 images later." link - more info here

Re:What kind of clearance

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually nearly all GPS units will not give readings above 60,000 feet. This is to prevent foreign countries from using our own system to lob missiles at us. KySat http://www.kysat.com/home.aspx did a similar balloon mission last summer. Some chips work, others dont. In our case it was a 50% failure rate.