Sunday 28 March 2010

Well done Robert Harrison!

Robert Harrison rigged a Cannon camera to a helium balloon to take photos from the edge of space - images that NASA admits would have cost the space agency tens of millions of dollars to capture.
The whole project cost Harrison about £500.
“A guy phoned up who worked for NASA who was interested in how we took the pictures,” Harrison told The Times UK. “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 Icarus Project, as Harrison has dubbed his ongoing experiments, features a point-and-shoot camera, a parachute and a GPS system all attached to a balloon. The balloon ascends up to 35 km before it pops, sending the camera floating gently back to the ground below. The GPS allows Harrison to track it to where it lands. The camera is wrapped in insulation so it continues to function in the frigid -60 C temperatures high in the Earth’s atmosphere.
The results can be seen on Harrison's website – robertharrison.org.
He continues to work on expanding his project to include such features as a swivelling mount for the camera to capture different angles.
NASA eat your heart out!

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