Million Dollar NASA Photos Beaten by Budget Balloon
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Amazing space photos taken with a digital camera and helium balloon.
It’s amazing what a little British ingenuity and a shoe-string budget can achieve. These glorious photos of space were taken by amateur enthusiast Robert Harrison, using a cheap Canon digital camera, some duct tape and a helium balloon.
In total, the rudimentary space camera cost just £500 ($747) on a project which a NASA spokesman admitted would have cost them millions of dollars.
Speaking to The Times, Mr Harrison explained: “A guy phoned up who worked for NASA who was interested in how we took the pictures. He wanted to know how the hell we did it.” The space experts thought Mr Harrison must have used a homemade rocket to take such spectacular shots from over 20 miles above the Earth’s surface.
The device uses materials readily available online, including loft insulation to wrap both the camera and a GPS tracking device to protect the digital equipment from freezing temperatures of -60°C (-75°F). The helium balloon which lifted the camera high above the Earth’s atmosphere expands to a diameter of up to 20 metres, before popping and letting the camera fall back to Earth via an attached parachute.
Mr Harrison said that he was by no means an electronics expert, and had picked up all he needed to know from browsing the internet, including how to reprogram his digital camera to sleep and reactivate every five minutes to take eight photos.
The shots recovered from this simple but highly effective method of automated photography have yielded some amazing results. The camera was also rigged to take brief film footage as it hung above the Earth’s atmosphere.
We have republished just some of the amazing photos taken here, but you can see the full collection at Mr Harrison’s dedicated website – The Icarus Project.
UPDATE
Thanks for all of the awesome comments and responses to this story which have been posted. This has generated quite a lot of online activity and was picked up by CNET Buzz Out Loud. Watch from around 28:34 to 30:43 if you want to see what they have to say.
Check with the FAA first before releasing those balloons. You don’t want to release one into a heavily travelled corridor for planes… Chances are slim, of course, but best to play it safe.
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According to The Times, Mr Harrison has to get permission from the Civil Aviation Authority before launching the balloon from an approved site in Cambridge.
As far as retrieving the camera goes, there are no guarantees of it not falling in the ocean, which is why there have been several launches, not all of them successful. The attached GPS monitor helps track the camera as it falls, so it can be found when it lands back on Earth.
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What the hell? Maybe people should just stay in their homes and never do anything interesting.
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So what you are saying is that we should bow to the powers and not explore? Me thinks thou dost protest too much. Why not just ban the private planes? Better yet, why not just open your eyes and be wary of large weather balloons…
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What a cool idea and way about making it happen. I give this guy props. And just when I think I’ve seen every use of Duct Tape possible… “What can we use that would protect a camera dangling from a balloon 20 miles above the surface of the Earth”? Why not duct tape. That stuff is Robust! Powerstance!
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It is just a fantastic work… really proud of u men… keep going, rock on.
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Next up. Video.
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We know ever since that NASA use their advanced technology for MILITARY AND PUBLIC USE. Now a poor man can afford their BILLIONS of spending in tracking their enemy. GOODBYE CIA, YOUR DEMN TO PERISH.
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Pretty cool, but I’ll be impressed when the camera comes back with photos of Sasquatch.
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That is actually the UK’s entire budget for space exploration.
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Congrats, man!!!
From Brazil.
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How far did he have to go to retrieve his camera?
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I’m wondering the same thing. It would suck if it landed in the middle of the ocean. :/
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Please look up the Fisher Space Pen Company and how they came up with the pressurized pen. It was done by Fisher, with Fisher’s money, no public funds. The pens were then given to NASA for use in space.
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Respect to the guy, but NASA don’t just take pictures of clouds you know, they do deep space exploration and take really great pictures of the solar system.
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NASA is a waste of money. Earth is your only home, get used to the idea. This is the only world we can live in.
What good has deep space exploration done for us? How have we benefited from the billions of dollars spent? Nothing. With millions of people hungry every day, I think that we could have spent the money much better.
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… by just getting a very, very long string instead.
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Also testament to the quality of Canon digital. The particular camera he used looks like an A-series, very good choice.
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NASA is probably in panic mode wondering how long it will be before this thing takes a picture of something NASA is hiding from us… they are losing control… keep it up.
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Anyone wanting to check out how to do this themselves should look into recent copies of Nuts-N-Volts magazine. They did a whole series of articles about “near space” science.
Relatively cheap and easy, and there are groups around to get involved with, without laying out cash yourself. Modifying a camera and taking pics is usually the first thing many near-space enthusiasts tackle. After that, it’s your time, finances and ingenuity that dictate how far you take it.
To answer a couple of the questions asked here: You send up a helium-filled balloon with a camera as its payload. You build electronics that operate the camera at a certain altitude, for a certain number of frames, etc. At an appropriate height (you can buy balloons with different ratings) the balloon pops and your payload descends if you have built in a parachute so that your payload safely returns. Using GPS or a radio transponder, you retrieve your payload and download your pictures.
Just Google “near space” for m
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the Earth is flat.
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That’s exactly what I was thinking, “Near Space” “pictures of the Earth,” it’s all Photoshop!
Regards,
President of The Flat Earth Society
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People are joking here about NASA spending money on a pen to use in space. But when man first went to the Moon the landing was rough and the switch that launches the moon lander back into space broke off. A pen fit perfectly and was used as the switch to fire the rocket to launch off the Moon. Only NASA has sent men to the Moon.
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Are you sure they actually landed on the Moon? All you have are their pictures. Why haven’t they gone again? Because they can’t.
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Robert, thank you for sharing these pictures with us – they are great.
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That would have happen if it came down on a motorway.
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Awesome! Hats off to Mr Harrison but wait a minute – “British ingenuity”? Yes, a rare display of that using a Japanese camera, a battery technology pioneered in Germany, a gas discovered by the French, balloons invented wherever… Bah, c’mon, keep nationality out of this.
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I agree… and let’s not forget the GPS was developed by the Americans… so let’s not put all the credit to the “British ingenuity”.
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What a great spokesman for Canon cameras and photography mags -you’ve done something no-one else has – go for it!
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هرچي باشه به پاي ماهواره ي اميد ايران كه نميرسه
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Some very good images. It is funny that NASA cannot put up a permanent extreme-altitude balloon ‘space station’…
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This is really nice, for a few bucks it ain’t bad!
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Show them how to NOT blow out all the dollars! Rock on! YOU, my fellow internet nerd, ARE AWWWWESOME!
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So beautiful.
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American ingenuity is not dead. Spending that amount is more than I would risk for such an enterprise; however, hat’s off to the man for doing so much with so little. If there was a point, other than fine pictures, it would be government waste. Almost 55% of working force is government at some level and Americans work almost half the year to pay for the folks who govern them.
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Isn’t it dangerous for flying planes?
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That is flat amazing and awesome!
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Brilliant. Why do the powers that be keep wasting so much money when such results can be obtained by using a little brainpower?
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20 miles is only 100,000 feet. The balloon and payload were still inside the atmosphere. A very nice accomplishment but hardly comparable to satellites that orbit from 5 to 1000 times farther up.
Actually NASA does have a balloon program. The big balloons they launch in Antarctica do cost about $1 million but the payloads can be measured in tons and the instrumentation is slghtly more complex than a digicam, GPS and parachute. They also have smaller balloons that cost much less and carrying smaller payloads.
http://sites.wff.nasa.gov/code820/
This isn’t to denigrate the Brit’s balloon flight. It was clever and well done. They have my admiration.
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Wowwww!!!!
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Remember, in space, the Russians used a pencil!!? Yes; ‘Cool…But’ has it about right. Actually he came from Somerset. Just one “Brit”.
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The Russians did not use a pencil. They used the same technology NASA did – both bought pens from Paul Fisher. Incidentally the cost to NASA was $6 a pen and they bought 100 of them from Mr Fisher in 1967. Russia bought about 400 of them. This is a fine example of the danger when the average guy who doesn’t research before speaking gets to vote on whether think tanks like NASA are “wasting money”. Think first – speak later.
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Regardless who “did it first” or “did it for less”, it’s still amazing and the pictures are unbelievably beautiful.
Are all you “it’s been done before” posters insinuating that there is nothing in the world worth doing if it’s already been done before?
If that’s the case, nobody would climb a mountain or skydive or anything because it’s “already been done”.
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Maybe it’s called Beauty of Blue…
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The pictures are very impressive. A similar project was launched last year from M.I.T.
The key for these projects is recovering the camera – even with tracking, you have to get lucky enough that the payload does not land in a tree… or an ocean!
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This is great stuff. I just love to see single operators achieve greatness by mastering multiple disciplines and following their dream. I am also spurred on in my own endeavours by your success. People like you should be lauded in the evening news instead of the usual corrupt politicians and boring suicide bombers, as if we haven’t had enough coverage of those. I love success stories like this, well done Robert, more power to you and people like you.
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