Students launch camera to edge of space, snap pics of Earth
Time lapse video ascent to 93,000 feet and back
Oliver Yeh is the kind of guy who cooks up ideas so kooky, so out-of-this-world, that even his fellow MIT students tend to roll their eyes when they hear them.
His latest concept — to launch a camera into near-space using a weather balloon, a cell phone, hand warmers and a drink cooler — fell flat when he sent out an e-mail message to dozens of his classmates, asking for help.
Unfazed, Yeh managed to find one friend willing to chip in. And on September 2, the go-it-alone pair floated a balloon-camera high enough into the atmosphere to photograph the curvature of the Earth and the deep black of space, all on a lunch-money budget of $148…
After Yeh’s fellow student and sidekick, Justin Lee, uploaded the story to CNN’s iReport.com, their camera-to-space effort, which they named Project Icarus, went viral online.
Since then, the duo has received a number of requests from other would-be space photographers, asking for their project notes. Yeh said he will post those soon on the project’s Web site at 1337arts.com.
RTFA. Inspiring to read about students with dreams greater than Rock Band and air guitar lust.
