Students Take Pictures From Space On $150 Budget

An anonymous reader writes "Two MIT students have successfully photographed the earth from space on a strikingly low budget of $148. Perhaps more significantly, they managed to accomplish this feat using components available off-the-shelf to the average layperson, opening the door for a new generation of amateur space enthusiasts. The pair plan to launch again soon and hope that their achievements will inspire teachers and students to pursue similar endeavors."

Re:This is hardly anything new

[Anonymous Coward]

Mmm? Keeping a camera functioning, then retrieving it, seems new.

Re:This is hardly anything new

[cptdondo]

But this is in range of a middle school science teacher. That's the beauty of it! Once you break the $500 dollar limit, our underfunded schools in the US can't afford it. Heck, the elementary school my kids go to was happy to received a $200 check I won at a local race. For $150, these kinds of parts can be built using donated stuff. Many people have cell phones they no longer use. Many people have digital cameras they don't use. I can see doing this with some donated materials for $100. Plus the technology is there - no custom built ham radios, just "ordinary" technology we all use on a daily basis. It brings space down to ordinary kids. It would be great if these guys provided drawings and what control they usd for the camera and see if we can launch this at our school.

Re:This is hardly anything new

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. High-altitude balloon launches are actually, surprisingly, fairly common. If you visit the second hyperlink and click on the "other launches" sidebar link, you can find links to other groups who have done balloon launches in the past -- high altitude photography is nothing new. I think what's really striking about what these guys have done though is that they took all of their pictures for $150. The radio modems that we use for several of our GPS projects (non-flight) that require communication between a rover and a basestation cost several hundred dollars alone, and CDMA modems cost several thousands of dollars. Give them credit for creative problem-solving. I wouldn't have thought to do what they did. Also, their list of hardware is... ridicuously short and simple-looking -- makes me want to try it myself.

Re:This is hardly anything new

[Rorschach1]

I think the hardware investment for my balloon project was about $300:

http://n1vg.net/balloon [n1vg.net]

I've got a new payload sitting here ready to go that's a lot cleaner and simpler, and has a 2-hour video capacity. Everything in the payload is off the shelf (granted, the radio/tracker is off my own shelf, it's one of my company's products) except for a DB9 connector and a few wires that took a few minutes to solder together. The housing is the top half of a magnum wine shipper, and all of the components (battery, radio, GPS) just wedge in between the foam pieces intended to hold the neck of the bottle. The camcorder is held in with rubber bands:

http://n1vg.net/images/payload1.jpg [n1vg.net]
http://n1vg.net/images/payload2.jpg [n1vg.net]
http://n1vg.net/images/payload3.jpg [n1vg.net]

The acrylic window that goes over the end took me about 3 minutes to fabricate on a CNC milling machine and could be easily and cheaply replicated.

It'd be cheaper to build a transmit-only version of this system, but having a receiver lets you do useful stuff like control a cutdown device. This particular payload doesn't have one yet, but it can be as simple as a 1-watt resistor that you drive at 3 watts for several seconds to melt through a Nylon or Spectra cord. Maybe an extra buck worth of hardware.

I might launch this thing as soon as next month if I can find the time. Possibly from the Mojave desert again, or maybe from the Cuyama Valley, a little closer to home. Ground crew and chase team volunteers are always welcome.

At some point I'd like to have a ready-to-fly kit to sell at a reasonable price to schools, along with enough instructional materials to get them started. I just don't have the time for it right now.

Re:Safety?

[Oswald]

You can inform the FAA to issue a NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) and you can get your flight permitted, all of the ham groups know how to do this. You can get a fine for not informing the FAA if your payload is over a certain weight.

You can, and you should, provide this information to the FAA. Rest assured, however, that no meaningful action will be taken in response. It's all based on the big sky theory (which, it should be noted, has a pretty good record in this matter).

Re:Damage on landing?

[Bigjeff5]

And far beyond the scope of the project.

The whole point was to do this without any sort of hacking, it's all off the shelf parts that a 3rd grade teacher could put together. It was the whole point of the exercise.

Re:This is hardly anything new

[YrWrstNtmr]

It's not as sexy to report "University of Kentucky students take pictures from space on $150 budget".

Actually, I'd expect MIT students to do stuff like this. Podunk U students doing it would be more newsworthy.

Re:NOT from space

[icebike]

The boundary of space was 65 miles (100km) but NASA pushed it higher after 150 miles, mostly out of a fit of pique following SpaceShipOne's successful claim on the X-Prize.

In any event, 20 miles is pretty impressive, but its still not Space, although, as Sarah would say, you can see it from there...

Re:This is hardly anything new

[shimage]

It's not new. There is a balloon class at the University of Washington. They launch a weather balloon with "payloads" designed (sort of, anyway) and built by students from an airport in the middle of nowhere (well, Central Washington) at the end of the class. The professors handle telemetry, which no doubt costs more than $150, but since the bandwidth is so low, they can't telemeter images anyway, so recovery is required. Incidentally, every payload has been recovered so far. Three or four years ago, an ambitious student that knew a bit more than most about digital electronics strapped a camera onto the payload just for shits and giggles (yes, self-powered and rigged to trigger every minute or so). The images he got back were pretty amazing, so after that the professors started offering extra credit for cameras, and every year at least one group gets a good set of pictures. In fact, last year they got one on the way up of an airplane that came a bit closer than it should have. The reason why no one has heard of this before is because no one thinks it's interesting enough to tell the press about; except MIT students, who apparently think that everything they do is hot shit.

Re:This is hardly anything new

[mystic414]

Give them credit for creative problem-solving.

They get no credit for creative problem-solving when four teenagers in Spain did the same thing six months ago:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5005022/Teens-capture-images-of-space-with-56-camera-and-balloon.html [telegraph.co.uk]

Re:This is hardly anything new

[Bruce Perens]

Well, this phone was from Boost Mobile, a pay-as-you-go service. I have Net10, and they have not objected to my taking phones out of service early. Indeed, the way their service works, if you don't like your phone at all, buying a new one at monthly renewal time works out best.

Net10 disables the USB data functionality on all of their phones. So, using the more expensive Boost would be necessary.

Re:This is hardly anything new

[xrayspx]

Don't be disappointed, submit the link! That said, I've never contributed a damn thing to this site, so so much for that advice.

Re:Yeah, no smart kids outside MIT.

[moosesocks]

It's not as sexy to report "University of Kentucky students take pictures from space on $150 budget".

Actually, I'd expect MIT students to do stuff like this. Podunk U students doing it would be more newsworthy.

Yeah, no smart kids outside MIT.

You're a fucking asshole, you know that? Total fucking gaping asshole.

Hm. Can't tell which one is the actual troll.

MIT's a good school, no doubt -- easily one of the best. However, I will agree that the amount of praise it receives in the press (and by the general public) is hyperbolic and tremendously overstated.

The one thing I'll concede is that MIT's marketing department must be excellent.

(Full disclaimer: I graduated from a public university, and have a great deal of respect for MIT. However, I'm %*#ing sick of reading job postings that contain the phrase "We are only recruiting Ivy League (or equivalent) graduates for this position.")