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Balloon and Duct Tape Deliver Great Space Photos

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the i-can-see-my-house-from-here dept.

krou writes "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."

7 of 238 comments (clear)

  1. Re:All the NASA scientists couldn't think of that? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yeah, of course NASA is too stupid to think of using balloons.

  2. Photos here by mccrew · · Score: 5, Informative

    Slashdotted, pics here:
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/30721501@N05/collections/72157621244472915/

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  3. Re:Cool by perpenso · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is awesome, kudos to the guy who pulled it off.

    Its also pretty sad that the engineers at NASA never thought of it...

    Actually the "NASA" types were doing that sort of thing many decades ago, pre maned space flight. If you gave this guy hundreds of millions for a budget he would have probably built a fancy rocket too.

  4. College kids did it for a heck of a lot less money by Cwix · · Score: 5, Informative

    Umm a couple of college kids fom MIT did this last year for $150 dollars. http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/09/the-150-space-camera-mit-students-beat-nasa-on-beer-money-budget/

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  5. Re:All the NASA scientists couldn't think of that? by Aranykai · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually, thats a myth.

    http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp

    The "space pen" was developed independently from NASA and NASA did in fact use pencils on several early missions.

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  6. Re:Cool by inerlogic · · Score: 5, Interesting

    he's european.... they're more polite than we asshole americans :)

  7. Re:Cool by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    In Chicago your warning would have been the burst of gunfire.