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Photographer and His Kids Send HD Camera and iPhone Into Space

by Terrence O'Brien on September 30, 2010 at 08:10 AM

space balloon image
Luke Geissbühler and his children are hardly the first people to send a weather balloon up into space with an HD camera attached. But that doesn't stop us from watching in awe every time we see a DIY craft go up and send back shaky footage of Earth's blue atmosphere bleeding into the black void of space. The video was captured by a high-defintion camera stashed with an iPhone (for GPS tracking) into an insulated Styrofoam box. The balloon survived high winds and freezing temperatures on its way to 100,000 feet, before the lack of atmospheric pressure finally caused it to burst, sending the camera plummeting back towards Earth. A parachute and foam kept the camera from shattering on impact, and the GPS and a blinking LED led the family to the amateur space craft which landed in a tree only 50 miles north of the launch site in Newburgh, New York.

Click through after the break to watch the video.

Tags: cameras, DIY, earth, gps, iphone, photographer, space, top

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