Teens take pictures of space with balloon, Nikon Coolpix camera

The closest most of us 'round here will ever get to outer space is blogging about the Lunar X Prize, so our inner astronauts get rather giddy any time an amateur makes it to the cusp of the gravity well. The above photos were taken by the Meteotek team, a teacher and his four students from the IES La Bisbal school in Catalonia, Spain. The group designed and launched a balloon kitted out with a Nikon Coolpix and custom built electronics, intending to get some shots at 30,000 feet. Well exceeding their expectations, the $80 digicam (held aloft by a $60 latex balloon) reached over 100,000 feet, at which point it lost inflation and fell to the earth. As the balloon rose, the team was able to map its progress using Google Earth via the craft's on-board radio receiver. After it fell back to earth, the group "travelled 10km to find the sensors and photographic card," said one of the students, "which was still emitting its signal, even though it had been exposed to the most extreme conditions."

[Via Switched]

[birder @ Mar 20th 2009 12:30PM]

Try launching that in America and see how fast you end up in Gitmo as a terrorist.

[ChimericDream @ Mar 20th 2009 12:35PM]

Precisely what I was thinking

[ProfessorDex @ Mar 20th 2009 12:38PM]

If it was a live feed from the camera, you could at least see the jets coming to escort you away. :)

[Wwhat @ Mar 20th 2009 1:02PM]

People do it all the time, and they launch homemade rockets too, don't let the media get you into a state of mind where you start to fear everything and think nothing is allowed.

Of course what WOULD happen in the US is that you would get a million people swearing they saw an UFO and it abducted them and now they have superpowers, but that's another story.

Oh and additionally please follow the news a bit and note that obama is closing the quantanamo bay torture camp.

[robmora @ Mar 20th 2009 5:37PM]

I remember seeing a very similar project in Ontario,Canada a year or two ago.

Found it... they even have some video. Their balloon seem to be getting thrown around a lot though:
http://www.natrium42.com/halo/flight2/

[tekd @ Mar 21st 2009 6:13AM]

This happened to work out well, but since you can't control the fall trajectory you run the risk of actually being a terrorist if your camera ends up falling to earth at terminal velocity and kills a bus driver or something.

And there's also the rather unlikely possibility that when you send your balloon up to airplane flying altitudes that your balloon ends up in someone's turbines. So you'd have to make sure that your balloon won't be pushed by winds off into someone's flight trajectory.

[Bob Aman @ Mar 23rd 2009 4:33PM]

Pssh, America? I launched a KAP rig in Kenya and got myself hauled away by a big group of security guys working for the Kenya Airports Authority. They drove up in a couple of trucks, and were like, "Get in." Apparently you're not allowed to fly a kite within 30 km of an airport, which by their reckoning is anywhere in Nairobi. Apparently model rockets are also similarly banned. They let me go, but that probably had something to do with me being an American. International incidents are bad for the tourism business I guess.

[Chris Are @ Mar 20th 2009 12:30PM]

Wow, the coolest thing I ever did w/ my teachers was pack an egg in bubble wrap and try to get it to survive a drop from the roof of the school. That's freaking awesome!

[Rob Conway @ Mar 20th 2009 12:32PM]

Yeah, that kicks major ass!

[RioRyan @ Mar 20th 2009 12:33PM]

Did it survive?

[barry99705 @ Mar 20th 2009 12:34PM]

Egg drops are fun. We did one when I was in school. The cool part was one of the kids dad is a pilot. Se he dropped the ones that survived the roof from 100 feet. None of them survived that one, but I think it was a combination of height and speed.

[Shadyman @ Mar 20th 2009 2:30PM]

@Rioryan:

"...travelled 10km to find the sensors and photographic card, which was still emitting its signal, even though it had been exposed to the most extreme conditions."

And... You're seeing pictures, no? :)

[RioRyan @ Mar 20th 2009 3:22PM]

Shadyman:

I was talking about Chris Are's egg.
"try to get it to survive a drop from the roof"

And... You're reading comments before you reply to them, no? :)

[CJ @ Mar 20th 2009 7:14PM]

Yeah, I did the old 'let's see if an egg will survive impact' experiment at school with my teacher.

Except that it was after school. And the egg wasn't wrapped in plastic. And the teacher was already driving away.

[emirabal @ Mar 23rd 2009 6:03AM]

SAME HERE LOL

[Kobutah @ Mar 20th 2009 12:30PM]

I know this is cool and all, but it has been all over the net and back in the past few days.

[Fragmit @ Mar 20th 2009 12:43PM]

Really? That's so awesome that you saw it before a bunch of other people. You must get all the chicks, them being like, "Hey, that's the guy that read that camera space article before anyone else on Engadget.".

[JB @ Mar 20th 2009 12:47PM]

@Frag

Fuck that is the funniest thing I have read all day.... even though it is only 9:45am west coast

Still laughing out loud.

[LloydChiro @ Mar 20th 2009 12:50PM]

Why is Engadget wasting all of Kobutah's time? Don't you know he has better things to do than read news he's already read?

[gaucho @ Mar 20th 2009 1:18PM]

Agreed, epic win Frag.

[haX0r @ Mar 20th 2009 3:23PM]

lmao @ frag

Kob - what a douche!

[OfficeLazy @ Mar 20th 2009 12:31PM]

Kool~~~

[TRLK @ Mar 20th 2009 12:31PM]

NERD ALERT

But seriously... that is quite remarkable...
I wonder if Nikon will use this..
'Nikon works even if you suffocate to death'

[Pom @ Mar 20th 2009 12:32PM]

I'm sure Nikon is very happy

[Wwhat @ Mar 20th 2009 1:04PM]

And look how they fancied it up:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/meteotek08/2638101183/sizes/l/in/set-72157614847488964/

Spongebob the nikon

[sean @ Mar 20th 2009 12:40PM]

welcome to 2008

[Chris Are @ Mar 20th 2009 1:39PM]

?

[whatishalo? @ Mar 20th 2009 4:31PM]

Dude, check your computer clock, I think it's a little behind.

[Anuj Vohra @ Mar 20th 2009 12:42PM]

Wow...that's amazing!

[der00 @ Mar 20th 2009 12:38PM]

Thats Freaking sweet i want one.... :-D

[Pete @ Mar 20th 2009 12:40PM]

How did they recover the camera? I've been following this for a few days and they mention they recovered the pic from the camera afterwards.... Did it have a parachute or did the sift through the remains of a project that came back down at terminal velocity?

[Magallanes @ Mar 20th 2009 12:46PM]

Good question, i too want to known.

[Adam Pflug @ Mar 20th 2009 1:01PM]

I dont know about them, but for our project the payload was equipped with a parachute which deployed when the balloon popped, gps and a radio. The altitude, gps location, etc were read over the radio with a text-to-speech chip (as well as DTMF tones), and we monitored its location with a giant antenna from the ground. We followed it with cars and used directional antenna's to hone in on a different signal once it was on the ground. We flew 2 balloons that day, one of which we were able to find ourselves. The other one was found by a hunter ~8 months later, but we had thought to put contact information all over the payload as well as to offer a reward for returning it - so we got the second one back that way.

[Albert @ Mar 20th 2009 1:04PM]

@Pete: they attached a parachute to the system. According to their comments, they bought it at www.the-rocketman.com

If you're interested you can check their flickr set at http://www.flickr.com/photos/meteotek08/2577051309/

You can gather more information in the project site: http://teslabs.com/meteotek08/ I'm afraid it's written in Catalan, but you can use the Google Translator page as well ;-)

greetings from Barcelona!! :-D

[Adam Pflug @ Mar 20th 2009 12:40PM]

I actually did this for my earth and space sciences class (ESS 205) at the University of Washington last year... We got up to 36km I believe. Awesome project because we had limits (1 pound for each 4 person group's module, $50 limit for equipment), and we had to create all the electronics from raw components, so we learned about that and space :).
Pics here: http://flash3.ess.washington.edu/ess205
One cool my my group got: http://flash3.ess.washington.edu/ess205/2GB_chip/100MEDIA/IMG_0093.JPG

[jerry @ Mar 24th 2009 8:53PM]

You have to stop embarrassing NASA like that, or you could get into real trouble!

There is real federal money at stake here. You can't go doing things like this where you only spend a few hundred dollars and get results!

[Daniel @ Mar 20th 2009 12:49PM]

I love the last line in the article in the read link.

"The pupils' incredible school science project has already caught the attention of the University of Wyoming in the US."

NO WAI WYOMING!??!

[Buell @ Mar 20th 2009 3:39PM]

@Daniel

They may be a bit behind the times, but they give a free college education to students with a 2.5GPA or better. They also must graduate from a Wyoming high school. However, if they offer classes that do this type of project they may be able to increase their enrollment from out of state as well. I'm pretty sure they are looking for anything to increase enrollment right now.

[thedman07 @ Mar 20th 2009 12:53PM]

There must have been some favorable winds. It seems like if you go that high up, the package could end up more than 10 km away.

[Wwhat @ Mar 20th 2009 1:07PM]

Yeah that part of the story is perplexing, since I'm told there are constant streams of wind current at various altitudes with speed of up to 200KM/h.

[Adam Pflug @ Mar 20th 2009 3:06PM]

Actually the air is pretty darn calm after you get up about 10km...

[Wwhat @ Mar 20th 2009 9:50PM]

You go through plenty of layers to get there though right?

[jack1701 @ Mar 22nd 2009 6:43AM]

While the baloon is floating up, the earth didn't stand still.

[soobin27 @ Mar 20th 2009 12:53PM]

In an unrelated news, North Korean leader vows revenge after American attempt at his life via falling object from the sky.

[TheAngryGamer @ Mar 20th 2009 2:09PM]

Your attempt at humor is ruined by the fact that you didn't RTFA. Unless "Catalonia, Spain" is now part of the US.

[Patriks7 @ Mar 20th 2009 3:51PM]

Of course it is. The US owns the whole world. Actually, there are no countries outside of the US. It's just the US in this world.

[Steve @ Mar 20th 2009 1:02PM]

I don't get it. How does this story relate to the iPhone?

[TheAngryGamer @ Mar 20th 2009 2:10PM]

LMFAO.

agreed, agreed, agreed.

[DanDan @ Mar 22nd 2009 10:45PM]

LMFAO!

They obviously used Google Earth on Iphones to locate the balloon - Im looking forward to enjoying three articles (at least) about this.

[chocozuna @ Mar 20th 2009 1:04PM]

What a solid endorsement for Nikon!