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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."
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.
Bruce Perens.
Their site mentioned that the antenna of the phone got embedded in the ground, and it's not clear from the pictures if they had a parachute on it at all, or if it was just too small.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
My ACME Slingshot Cam may actually have a chance. I'm inspired again.
Table-ized A.I.
Students from Cambridge University have been doing this for a couple of years now.
"The cell phone was secured to the camera and constantly reported its GPS location via text message."
Sure the GPS part of the phone would work, but is anyone skeptical of the SMS bit? How could this possibly have been within tower range?
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
NN
This is a fairly standard high-altitude photography method, that is just being hyped up. You attached a camera to a helium balloon. Whoop-de-fucking-doo. Doesn't have anything to do with space.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Not anymore my friend, not anymore. Not since the nineties at least.
Oh and by the way:
"You and I in a little toy shop
Buy a bag of balloons with the money we've got.
Set them free at the break of dawn
'Til one by one, they were gone.
Back at base, bugs in the software
Flash the message, Something's out there.
Floating in the summer sky.
99 red balloons go by."
Bugs in the software, eh? Well, they may still have them. Maybe it is still a relevant song.
I never knew there was an english version:
http://www.eightyeightynine.com/music/nena-99luftballoons.html
It has been toned down quite a bit.
Je me souviens.
According to the Federation Internationale D'espace, space begins at 62 miles, about 100 kilometers. Often referred to as the 62 mile club.
Cheers.
Yet Socrates himself is particularly missed.
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed.
No, I found the same cell phone for $40 at many online places, it took 30 seconds to do a search.
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
Now I'm thinking about more balloons and a DSLR with a circular polarizing filter...
Already been done.
Twice. :)
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/
Well, somehow, it is already being exploited..
It is used to *reduce* the overall kinetic energy of a re-entering bolide so that the acceleration (and hereby force) to which the payload is submitted at impact doesn't damage said payload.
And also.. the overall energy dissipated during atmospheric re-entry cannot exceed the amount of energy used to put the object wherever - and at whatever velocity - it was before re-entry. So if you are worried about energy expenditure.. just don't launch !
--Ivan
If everyone actually followed all the regulations we have nowadays, no one smaller than Boeing would ever get anything done.
The boundary of space was 65 miles (100km) but NASA pushed it higher after 150 miles, mostly out of a fit of pique following SpaceShipOne's successful claim on the X-Prize.
In any event, 20 miles is pretty impressive, but its still not Space, although, as Sarah would say, you can see it from there...
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Cambridge University and some UK high school (US Middle school) kids did this in 2008 - http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/news/dp/2008120401
You either need to divide by zero or dereference a null pointer inside it.
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.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
The first time we launched our radios failed. It landed about 17 miles from where we predicted (We use software whose name escapes me at the moment which can predict the location based on current wind patterns) and someone else found it and called us. The second time, our radios gave us its coordinates to within a couple of meters. We had been following it for its entire flight (unfortunately, the balloon had been under-filled, so it landed a few hundred miles south of where we planned... We followed it for 13 hours). As far as landing in places where you won't be able to get it... you don't launch anywhere near any? You should plan your launch such that you are nowhere near any large bodies of water, as they are the primary thing that makes it unreachable. You can climb tress and etc. Desolate areas are better, because landing on the highway will cause issues. (We chose to launch in New Hampshire, with our ballon intended to land in Central MA. The first shot was pretty close, the second shot landed in southern CT, hopefully our third shot will land in Central MA, but we haven't gotten that far yet)
I don't know, I'm still trying to figure out how boats float....
It's not as sexy to report "University of Kentucky students take pictures from space on $150 budget".
Actually, I'd expect MIT students to do stuff like this. Podunk U students doing it would be more newsworthy.
Yeah, no smart kids outside MIT.
You're a fucking asshole, you know that? Total fucking gaping asshole.
Hm. Can't tell which one is the actual troll.
MIT's a good school, no doubt -- easily one of the best. However, I will agree that the amount of praise it receives in the press (and by the general public) is hyperbolic and tremendously overstated.
The one thing I'll concede is that MIT's marketing department must be excellent.
(Full disclaimer: I graduated from a public university, and have a great deal of respect for MIT. However, I'm %*#ing sick of reading job postings that contain the phrase "We are only recruiting Ivy League (or equivalent) graduates for this position.")
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose