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Jack White's label played a vinyl record at 94,000 feet
Jack White's Third Man Records label is no stranger to using technological feats to draw publicity, but its latest feat is something truly special. The company recently teamed up with Students and Teachers in Near Space to become the first to play a vinyl record, the Carl Sagan-sampling "A Glorious Dawn," at the edge of space -- to be exact, in the stratosphere at 94,413 feet. As you might gather from the video (skip to 1:21:20 to see the maximum ascent), it involved a lot more than strapping a turntable to a high-altitude balloon. Key designer Kevin Carrico explains that there were quite a few technical considerations needed to keep the record spinning for as long as possible on its journey.
Festo's flying sphere makes the creepiest drone deliveries
Festo is known for drones modeled on animals, like the Seagull-inspired SmartBird and 3D-printed BionicANTs. We're not sure what animal the "FreeMotionHandling" sphere is supposed to be -- some kind of flying jellyfish, maybe? Regardless, it's one of company's most useful drones so far. Filled with helium, it can soar autonomously in any direction thanks to eight on-board propellers. Guided by indoor GPS and a pair of cameras, it can then grab an object using using the company's tongue-like FlexShapeGripper and absorb it into the body of the balloon.
Google seeks carrier for Loon pilot program in India
Google's Project Loon has blossomed from a crazy-sounding scheme into a practical program. In fact, the company can now auto-launch a balloon in 30 minutes that will stay aloft for 100 days. For the next step, the company will run a full pilot program to provide service to a large number of actual people, and is planning on doing it in India. The company's India VP, Rajan Anandan, told the Economic Times that it will need to partner with an India-based carrier to do so. "We can't do a Loon pilot without partnering with a local telco. We're talking to a number of them."
ICYMI: Mousetrap for memory, balloon space launch and more
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-30194{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-30194, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-30194{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-30194").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: A virtual reality simulator putting mice through a pretend maze is analyzing memory formation that should benefit humans. A newish space launch company plans to inflate stadium-sized balloons for a gentle flight to the stratosphere, with actual flights scheduled for 2017. Meanwhile researchers built a tractor beam using high-amplitude sound waves to move small objects, which is just as cool as it sounds.
NASA pushes back its latest flying saucer test
NASA's not having an easy time testing the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator that should eventually put big payloads on Mars. The agency has scrubbed all test flights this weekend due to weather, and now won't take the flying saucer-like balloon for a spin until June 8th at the earliest. The low-altitude wind is simply too rough, NASA says. The setback isn't completely shocking (the LDSD is often at the mercy of its environment by its nature), but it's disappointing if you were hoping to witness NASA's futuristic craft in action.
Google's 'balloon-powered internet for all' is almost ready
In case you wanted another behind-the-scenes look at how Google's internet-by-balloon service is doing, now is your chance. The Project Loon team posted a new video showing everything from how it manages its balloon fleet, the balloon creation process, their partnership with local LTE network providers abroad and a few other aspects of the initiative as well. For example, the team is keeping the airborne-internet vessels afloat for up to 100 days at a time now, can build balloons in hours instead of days, and can launch many dozens of balloon every day instead of just a single one. Nearly two years after the project's launch, it's gone from "will it work?" to being presented as something that will work. With thousands of balloons aloft, it can push signal into areas that can't easily get internet service in other ways. As is typical with these status updates, it's slickly produced and has a handful of whimsical animations and music to boot -- check it out after the break.
Google balloons and drones bring global wireless closer to reality
Google's aerial ambitions continue unabated. Need proof? Just talk to Sundar Pichai -- just before he sat down for a Q&A with Bloomberg's Brad Stone at MWC, the Google SVP confirmed the company's internet-beaming Titan drones would take their flight in the coming months, and that its Project Loon balloons now stay afloat for "six months at a time." The last time Google decided to speak publicly about its fleet of internet-beaming Project Loon balloons, they could languidly hang in the atmosphere for about 100 days. That's not a bad stretch considering these things can now deliver LTE data speeds to devices on the ground, but Google's got these things running even better than before.
Google wants the US' wireless spectrum for balloon-based internet
Google's internet-by-air effort, Project Loon, isn't necessarily limited to countries where data coverage is frequently spotty; it might be headed to the US, too. The search firm recently sent a letter to the FCC suggesting that potentially available high-frequency spectrum (above 24GHz) should be handy for providing "broadband access via airborne platforms" like balloons and drones, not just on-the-ground networking. In other words, it's open to deploying Project Loon stateside beyond limited test runs.
A novel smartphone case that should never touch your iPhone
YouTube member curtisnstacey created a novel smartphone case that requires you to push your phone into a ballon as it is deflating. It's a clever trick that will allow the balloon to fold itself over your phone, forming a protective cover. Though inventive, the case has two major detractors that should cause to you think twice about wrapping your iPhone in this way. First, the balloon provides only minimal protection for your device. If you drop your iPhone, you still will get a dint, ding or even worse, a crack. Second, it's a balloon, people, and not a smartphone case. Now matter how you spin it, the latex is tacky, and that stem at the top looks ridiculous. The best case usage I could see is as a cheap party trick. Embed your phone in a ballon and see if anyone has the lung capacity to re-inflate the balloon and free your phone from its rubber prison.
Google grabs its first carrier partner for Project Loon tests in Australia
Google's internet-transmitting Project Loon balloons are set to float above Australia and beam data down to residents below. The company announced plans to use balloons to bring the internet to disconnected areas last year, and after semi-successful trials in New Zealand, Brazil and the States, it's teaming up with a local carrier (Australia's Telstra) for the first time to launch Loon's biggest test flight to date.
Old Navy's machine turns your selfies into giant balloon art
Want to do more with your selfies than post them on Instagram for the umpteenth time? Old Navy might have a way to make them stand out... if just for a brief, glorious moment. The clothing shop is kicking off its 20th birthday by creating the Selfiebration machine, a 15 foot tall behemoth that converts Twitter photos into balloon art. All you do is tweet a photo to Old Navy with the #selfiebration hashtag -- after that, the device (co-designed by Deeplocal) rasterizes your self-portrait and displays it on a grid of nearly 1,000 balloons that inflate to different sizes.
A Swiss designer built a machine that sends messages by balloon
The practice of sending messages in bottles (or other floating vessels) has been used to determine the flow of oceans and relay military information. Of course, folks also use the method to serendipitously send correspondence to whoever should stumble upon it. The same principle applied to a contest that designer David Colombini entered as a young lad. With the goal of seeing whose balloon would travel farthest, he and other children released them, and Colombini's made it from Switzerland to Austria. Now, he's made Attachment: a student project that accepts messages from a website, attaches them to biodegradable balloons and floats them off "haphazardly to a potential recipient."
Balloons could power space tourism by 2016
Richard Branson is investing in a plane that'll take tourists to the edge of space, but who needs that when you've got balloons? A company in Arizona is working on a high-altitude craft that'll use a huge balloon to gently carry passengers voyagers to the edges of the atmosphere. It's already tested the technology with a 10-percent size scale model, which carried and safely returned a payload of 200 kilos. The next step is to build a full-sized equivalent, capable of journeying 120,000 feet into the air and back again -- just short of the 127,852 feet that Felix Baumgartner fell during the Red Bull Stratos experiment / publicity stunt. Of course, anything that involves a trip to space (or as close as anyone can say) is going to be expensive, and it'll set you back $75,000 if you choose to get in line when commercial trips begin in 2016.
NASA wants to explore Saturn's biggest moon with drones
Despite brisk temperatures of -290 degrees F, Saturn's giant Titan moon is of great interest to scientists, thanks to Earth-like geography, hydrocarbon "lakes" and even possible life. Though NASA's Cassini-Huygens probe visited Titan some time ago, the space agency would like to return at some point -- this time with a quadrotor. Using the latest drone and sensor tech, it would weigh less than 10kg (22 pounds), deploy from a recharging nuclear "mothership" balloon and acquire high-res images from close to the surface. With the benefit of that reconnaissance, it could land at promising spots, take microscopic photos and scoop up samples to be analyzed later by the mothership. NASA plans to develop the mission concepts further and design the drone in collaboration with AeroVironment -- so we might one day see if Titan matches the insane artist concepts.
Google shows off Project Loon balloon-distributed internet tests over California
While Google's Project Loon moonshot project first broke cover, the pilot for its internet via high-flying helium balloon service launched in New Zealand, but a post by the team today is about research flights in the US. There's no mention of plans to try offering the service on domestic latitudes, but the tests are allowing Google to tweak its power systems, design and radios. The one specifically mentioned involves stratospheric flights over Fresno, investigating the effect of the city's radio interference on Project Loon's transmissions. We're not sure how much closer this puts us to popping up an antenna outside to get our broadband connection bounced from a balloon flying at about 60,000 feet, but more pics and details are available at the link below.
Helikite balloons can hoist emergency LTE network after natural disaster
We know, we know, Google has the whole hot air balloon thing covered. But this idea is a bit different. It consists of a group of "helikites," or small load-bearing balloon-kite hybrids, which can quickly be launched to form a network of LTE or WLAN masts up to an altitude of 2.5 miles, providing data coverage following an earthquake or tsunami. A standalone rugged suitcase, or "Portable Land Rapid Deployment Unit," contains everything needed for activation in tough conditions. Researchers behind the project, including German R&D firm TriaGnoSys, have even found a way to integrate the temporary network with existing cell towers that remain in tact on the ground -- a feature that makes the system suitable not only for emergencies, but also for expanding mobile coverage during planned events in remote locations. Of course, the helikites would eventually drift apart and lose connectivity, probably after around four days depending on the wind, but these things never travel quite as far as you'd expect.
Earth, as seen by Raspberry Pi camera attached to weather balloon
The Raspberry Pi camera has been out for less than two weeks, and it's already skirted the final frontier. Armchair astronaut Dave Akerman strapped the $25 shooter to the equally inexpensive Raspberry Pi, put it inside a protective case shaped like the berry that inspired the product's name, and then attached it to a weather balloon. Three hours and quite a few vertical miles later, his experiment was recovered by a stranger not too far from the launch site, who called the phone number written on the side of the Linux powered microcomputer. The resulting photos are beautiful (see more at the source link), and required no help whatsoever from NASA.
Army spy blimp to launch within weeks: 300 feet long, $500 million, 'multi-intelligent'
It can't go faster than 34MPH and it's already a year late for its planned deployment in Afghanistan, but Northrop Grumman's Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) is now set for its maiden flight. The test run is scheduled for sometime between June 6th and 10th over Lakehurst, New Jersey, whose residents ought to be forewarned that it is not a solar eclipse or a Death Star, but simply a helium-filled pilotless reconnaissance and communications airship that happens to be the size of a football field. After floating around for a while, the giant dirigible is expected to journey south to Florida, where it'll be fitted to a custom-built gondola that will carry the bulk of its equipment, and by which time her enemies hopefully won't have come into possession of an air force.
Nokia nabs 808 PureView space shot of this big, blue 41-megapixel marble
We've seen plenty of shots of the Nokia 808 PureView in action, but they've all been hampered by boring old terrestrial bounds. Thankfully, a team attached the handset to a giant balloon for a little more perspective. The photo is at the end of the six and half minute video after the break, but thankfully there are a lot of lovely shots of Iceland accompanying atmospheric music to keep you busy in the meantime. [Thanks, Chad]
Google Earth adds balloon and kite aerial imagery, invites you to contribute
Google Earth already offers quite a variety of ways to explore the planet, but the folks in Mountain View never seem content to leave things alone for long. Their latest addition is some aerial imagery of a slightly different sort -- images shot from ordinary balloons and kites. That initial batch of photos comes courtesy of The Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science, which is itself a grassroots effort that anyone can contribute to. And that's apparently what Google hopes folks will do in order to expand the aerial views available -- as Google notes on its Lat Long blog, all that you need to get started is a digital camera and about $100 in parts, plus a little initiative. Complete details on how to start your own DIY mapping effort, or simply explore the options now available, can be found at the links below.
