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.
This reminds me of the B.E.A.R. project by a bunch of ham radio people in America.
Thanks so much for keeping us in perspective!
Wow that is incredible.
Lou
This was already done by www.thepeoplefoundation.org the video is posted on their website.
Doesn’t make it any less awesome.
What a waste of £500. Nothing I can’t get on the WeatherChannel web site for free.
Some kids in a U.S. college did this last year for much cheaper. It was on Digg / Engadget.
Wow… that is just… wow!
How did he get the camera back?
GPS.
It says he placed a GPS on it. I’m sure they just tracked it down that way.
Now we’d like to see some documenting the melting ice caps in Antartica and depletion of the Brazilian rain forest. If you can, toss in a few ultraviolet shots of the Gulf Coast.
Thanks.
There are some great shots there!
That’s a great example of how innovative thinking can get the job done for far less than traditional process! Great job!
Way to go!! That’s showing them.
I was looking into something like this but with a remote control glider as the “payload”… some basic navigation via GPS and compass etc would probably work.
It’s easy to say all of that, but I would like to see it actually happen.
I have long contended that many of the multi-million dollar enterprises we engage in can be accomplished with off the shelf hardware and a little ingenuity – but then, where’s the profit in that?
Who exactly are you insinuating profits from space exploration besides humanity as a whole? Are you suggesting that NASA is raking in the money? If so, I’m suggesting you help yourself to a science text book followed by a history textbook.
Oh please, look past the bias of your textbooks and learn something by yourself for once.
Niether a science book nor a textbook tracks the financial delegations of individuals within the space program, I would suggest you buy “How to not be an assumptive idiot, for dummies”.
Yeah, I hear the next project this guy is doing is a helium balloon to Mars. Oh wait…
lol
Dollars follow value.
GROW A BODY.
How did he get the photos from the camera?
Read the article. He parachuted it down and located it via a GPS.
The same way he got the GPS information, I’d imagine. Bits are bits.
Sorry Brits, NASA WFF does this on a weekly basis. Only they send up probes which detects ozone levels… Granted their budget must be a digits greater than $750.
Sorry Brits, I love the way all Americans assume they can take credit for something one of their countrymen does for a living, and FYI the point is America spend millions for shots like this. British ingenuity is based on a man in a shed getting it done by any means without wasting billions of taxpayers money.
And I love the way people assume the photos from NASA were made on equipment solely for the purpose of taking those pictures. That same equipment did much more then just take pictures. If pictures was all NASA needed to get, it wouldn’t cost billions of dollars. How do you think all that equipment gets up to the international space station? Oh that’s right! That would be the SPACE SHUTTLE! Build one of those for only $750. That’s where the majority of the pictures of Earth come from thanks to NASA’s AMERICAN SPACE SHUTTLE (& the Russian Spacecraft too, I think it’s the Soyez). And yeah we do take credit for what our countrymen do with our tax dollars. That’s what gives us the right to complain when they do something stupid with them too. As for the British ingenuity? It’s been done before. Long before, by Americans!
Today NASA marks HUBBLE’s 20th birthday / 20 years of deep space penetration.
Happy Birthday you old bastard!
If there’s no gravity in space, how come the camera fell back to Earth once the balloon popped?!
There is gravity in space. There is gravity everywhere in the Universe. That’s why the Moon orbits the Earth or the Earth orbits the Sun. It’s just that an orbiting object is essentially in prolonged freefall around the body it’s orbiting. So, for example, astronauts inside the shuttle are “falling” around the Earth at the same speed as the shuttle and would feel “weightless” relative to the shuttle.
Look for the YouTube video peeps in space. Students did the same thing with a video camera before this. Cool nonetheless.
If there’s no gravity in space, how come the camera fell back to Earth once the balloon popped?!
Comment posted by Anonymous on 3/25/2010 9:14:09 PM
ROFLMAO
This is definitely a great and simple method for a very LIMITED purpose. I really doubt if NASA cares about taking a couple of snapshots of Earth good for little more than eye candy.
I doubt a balloon is going to get a multi million dollar satellite to space etc. Still a great amateur experiment. Forgive my spelling, I am in a hurry.
There are many uses for this. The balloon could be used to record differences in the Earth’s atmosphere, using temperature and pressure and probes. Defining the troposphere, mesosphere and stratosphere could be very useful.
Good job. But don’t forget the team of Spanish student who did this first.
Pupils tied a £56 camera to a balloon and then sent it to the edge of the atmosphere to capture photos of Earth.
Mr Harrison, YOU should work for NASA…
… how the hell do you find the camera once it hits the ground? How do you get it back? What if it lands in the ocean?
Did you bother to watch the Sky clip?
My only question… how the hell do you find the camera once it hits the ground? How do you get it back? What if it lands in the ocean?
THE GPS DEVICE!!!!!!!!!!!
Or just take it to the next level:
www.h2liftship.com
Dang. Looks like we have a new NASA.
Now do Mars.
LOL!!! This made me laugh!
I can see my house from here!
I think we found our new deputy chief for our space program.
NASA needs to get this guy into their financial department or design team… It would honestly save us quite the penny. Or anyone with a brain actually…
The space program is a means to employ the scientists we create at our schools. The nation needs a pool of scientists to draw great thinking from, from time to time — this is why we employ them with the space program. No one (who is as smart as a rocket scientist) would pour so much effort into developing their self into the kind of mind we need available if there were not a career lying in the balance.
Reminds me of that classic story of NASA back when they were preparing to put a man in space for the first time and just couldn’t get a pen working in zero gravity. They ended up spending millions of dollars solving the problem. The Russians on the other hand… used a pencil.
Great job!
MIT did it first.
A Canadian hobbyist used similar Canon camera to shoot stills and videos from 30km. He used more expensive radio equipment but he did it in 2007.
It’s amazing they did that but they aren’t the best photos and NASA is still getting better pictures of cooler galaxies.
… that reminds of a story I heard that NASA spent millions in a pen that would work in space and no gravity so the astronauts could make their notes, something around 30 million dollars… while the Soviet Union simply used a pencil instead!
Pencils are very dangerous things to have in space. If you break the lead, you’ve got a tiny length of electrically conductive graphite floating around in microgravity, ready to short circuit whatever piece of sensitive equipment it happens to drift into. The zero gravity pen wasn’t developed for the space program, it had been invented independently by a pen designer, I’m sure for a much more down-to-earth development cost than $30m.
Yes! One man with a solid dream can accomplish amazing things.
It is an extremely impressive feat, but let’s not forget that NASA isn’t just up there taking pictures.
Yes, those are great pictures – in random directions taken at random times. Those million-dollar missions are to take specific pictures of specific phenomena, not what happens to be in front of the camera when the shutter opens. It’s a cool hobby project, but to compare it to NASA missions is comparing apples and motorcycles. (Not to mention that the FAA is not going to look too kindly on lots of people launching large helium balloons carrying payloads into our busy commercial airspace.)
To be honest I need the big players to put things like GPS and Google Maps together to make this all possible, but it has been great fun.
a camera in Earth’s gravity well can only do so much.
You do understand that this is what Hubble is, yes?
But satellites can target specific sections and coordinates. NASA doesn’t built them just to take pretty pictures.
But what if a balloon like this collides with aircrafts/space shuttles?
What kind of permissions are required for the balloon up?
What if the balloon popped when it floated over the ocean? He’d never be able to retrieve it.
Inspiring innovation!
Keep up the good job.
Thank you Mr. Budget man. Billions of dollars are used up in the space program every year, for what ultimately amounts to nothing. Now we know we can throw together $1000 or so and get some out of this world photography.
You’re not very bright, are you?
NASA’s budget for a similar mission:
(projected cost: $1,000,000 with 2-week development schedule)
-NASA balloon to take aerial shots of the Earth’s surface ($1,000)
-Management costs ($999,000)
It takes lots of study and research to be a scientist, but it takes hardly any of that to be clever and intelligent.
Reminds of a story about how NASA spent millions to design a pen that could be used in zero gravity conditions.
Russians on the other hand used a pencil!!
Check out the record for highest sky dive. He reached his jump point by balloon also.
He must’ve staged these in a movie studio somewhere.
Duct tape?
Nah… duct tape is a Canadian thing… LOL.