An ingenious father-and-son duo in New York launched a HD video camera tied to a weather balloon 30 kms above the earth into the stratosphere and share footage that their camera captured in its incredible 100-minute journey. To get back the camera intact, they also attached an iPhone as a GPS device to send its coordinates upon landing to a cell phone tower. The video reveals that the camera, tied to a parachute that auto-inflated when the balloon burst due to atmospheric pressure, landed safely just 30 miles away from where it was launched.
Not bad for a seven-year-old’s first tryst with space, eh?
The original video has been posted on Vimeo here.
Read more about it here.
For more information about this experiment, visit the Brooklyn Space Program.
(Pic courtesy Brooklyn Space Program – more images are available for download here.)