Students Take Pictures From Space On $150 Budget

An anonymous reader writes "Two MIT students have successfully photographed the earth from space on a strikingly low budget of $148. Perhaps more significantly, they managed to accomplish this feat using components available off-the-shelf to the average layperson, opening the door for a new generation of amateur space enthusiasts. The pair plan to launch again soon and hope that their achievements will inspire teachers and students to pursue similar endeavors."

Comments

This is hardly anything new

[Bruce Perens]

Groups like EOSS have been doing this for at least 30 years, probably more. It's very common for a balloon launch to be a featured event in a ham radio conference. Their budgets per payload are similar, although they are able to do more technical work than featured in the MIT students work and often design their own radios, command devices, etc. None of this, though, is out of the range of a dedicated amateur. Note that there is a software-defined GPS in development that might be the best way to get around the 20K foot altitude limit of consumer GPS devices. Its component cost is pretty low, despite the $495 cost charged for an assembled device at that site.

Re:This is hardly anything new

[Bruce Perens]

This was in the range of a high-school teacher before. Indeed, there have been many high-school launches. Using donated parts doesn't really cut it. The camera has to be one of a few specific models that can run an Open Source download. The phone can't be just any one, unfortunately.

By the way, use of the phone at altitude violates FCC regulations and does a denial-of-service attack on cell sites because sites all of the way to the horizon are receiving that frequency.

Re:This is hardly anything new

[Bruce Perens]

Another thing they can do is use a part-15 or Amateur transmitter. Now that there is no Morse Code requirement, passing the lowest level of ham test is something you can do with a few hours study. And then you can have live TV from the balloon, and you can command it to cut down the balloon when you wish.

Re:This is hardly anything new

[Bruce Perens]

Check out Stratofox. That's the serious tracking group.

Re:... they used a cellphone GPS?

[Bruce Perens]

It was in line-of-sight to the tower. Most of the signal loss is from obstacles on the ground. When you have line-of-sight, you can go very far.

That's why use of cell phones at altitude is illegal. They illuminate thousands of cell cites all of the way to the horizon, and probably lock users out of a frequency on every one of those sites. It's sort of a denial-of-service attack.

Re:... they used a cellphone GPS?

[JorDan Clock]

From their website:

The GPS cell phone we used to track the location of our vehicle lost reception soon after launch (at an elevation of ~2500 feet).

So I'm guessing it gave it's location up to 2500 feet, disappeared, then reappeared when it went below about 2500 feet.

Re:Safety?

[Bruce Perens]

You can inform the FAA to issue a NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) and you can get your flight permitted, all of the ham groups know how to do this. You can get a fine for not informing the FAA if your payload is over a certain weight.

The terminal velocity of falling objects varies according to the weight of the object and the air resistance. A foam cooler and some ropes and torn balloon falling from altitude don't go very fast. Note that their descent took 40 minutes, and it was probably faster in thin air than thick.

There was an interesting mythbusters on falling bullets. They couldn't get much force out of them.

62mi / 100km

[imtheguru]

According to the Federation Internationale D'espace, space begins at 62 miles, about 100 kilometers. Often referred to as the 62 mile club.

Cheers.

Re:$50 GPS cell phone?

[QuantumLeaper]

No, I found the same cell phone for $40 at many online places, it took 30 seconds to do a search.

Re:NOT from space

[arth1]

Correct. A balloon can't be in space, simply because there must be atmosphere for the balloon to be lighter than, or it can't rise. Never mind that they tend to expand and explode before they reach that theoretical height...

Normally, what we consider the start of space is around 10 times as far out as the record for helium balloons. Even hydrogen balloons can get nowhere near space. If you could make a balloon filled with hard vacuum, you would be able to almost, but not quite, reach space.

So the correct tag for this article is !space

High School Students got better photos for $100

[nunoloureiro]

Some High School Students from Bilbao, Spain, did the same thing earlier this year for less than $100. Looking at the photos, it seems they got better shots.

Story here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5005022/Teens-capture-images-of-space-with-56-camera-and-balloon.html

Photos here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/meteotek08/sets/

Re:NOT from space

[Eric52902]

You either need to divide by zero or dereference a null pointer inside it.

Re:Yawn

[Megane]

Atmospheric burn-up is caused as you lose orbital velocity when you contact the atmosphere. As balloons and their payloads were never in orbit in the first place, there is no worry about anything burning up.