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."

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Re:NOT from space

[Gordonjcp]

Students from Cambridge University have been doing this for a couple of years now.

Re:This is hardly anything new

[Kira-Baka]

Some people provide better images [natrium42.com] too. The site I've linked even provides videos.

... they used a cellphone GPS?

[popo]

"The cell phone was secured to the camera and constantly reported its GPS location via text message."

Sure the GPS part of the phone would work, but is anyone skeptical of the SMS bit? How could this possibly have been within tower range?

Safety?

[Noodlenose]

While I love the low-cost aspect of this project, I am worried about the safety aspects: No air traffic control registering, and how did they prevent the bloody thing from hitting another human on the way down?

NN

Re:This is hardly anything new

[Plunky]

By the way, use of the phone at altitude violates FCC regulations and does a denial-of-service attack on cell sites because sites all of the way to the horizon are receiving that frequency.

I guess, if they thought of it, they could set the phone to not transmit unless it was under a set height and falling. That could save battery power too..

Re:Great Idea

[schon]

Now I'm thinking about more balloons and a DSLR with a circular polarizing filter...

Already been done. [flickr.com]

Twice. [flickr.com] :)

Re:This is hardly anything new

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not new. Plenty of other Universities have student projects that do the exact same thing. A quick google yields several. The only reason people care about this one is because it's at MIT. For some reason, mass media considers it newsworthy to report things that happen at MIT, even if MIT was not the first to do it. It's not as sexy to report "University of Kentucky students take pictures from space on $150 budget".

Re:Obligatory

[russotto]

Having FAA and FCC investigators show up at your dormroom? Priceless
Really, one would think MIT students would know better.

If everyone actually followed all the regulations we have nowadays, no one smaller than Boeing would ever get anything done.

Re:Damage on landing?

[GameMaster]

Actually, it's even worse that that. US regulations say that the receiver can work over 60,000 feet and can work at over a certain speed limit but that it isn't allowed to do both at the same time. The idea is to stop them from being used as guidance for low cost ballistic missiles. The problem is that many of the GPS manufacturers got lazy and just set their equipment to stop working if either condition occurred. In this case, it' really isn't the fault of the US regulations.

Re:This is hardly anything new

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard before that this violates FCC regs--but...I'm actually going to ask (anonymously)--why I--or anyone else...should give a damn. What you're claiming-- is that all I need to take out the cellular network (you said it was a ODS attack) in the country is a few pieces of $150 equipment? Couple of portable phones and some balloons... I've got the ultimate panic-inducing terrorist enhancement tool ? I just don't buy it...

If that's the case you might want to get to work on fixing it instead of blaming these guys for risking the problem. I'm just saying...if a multi billion dollar network can be seriously threatened by less than $200 of hardware--it's a design problem, not something that should be fixed through legislation or weak social measures.

More than likely, the network can handle it (I know I've seen people text on planes when nobody's looking, and nobody's shown up), but doesn't...deteriorate gracefully under such stress

Re:Pissed Off

[TheUnknownOne]

The first time we launched our radios failed. It landed about 17 miles from where we predicted (We use software whose name escapes me at the moment which can predict the location based on current wind patterns) and someone else found it and called us. The second time, our radios gave us its coordinates to within a couple of meters. We had been following it for its entire flight (unfortunately, the balloon had been under-filled, so it landed a few hundred miles south of where we planned... We followed it for 13 hours). As far as landing in places where you won't be able to get it... you don't launch anywhere near any? You should plan your launch such that you are nowhere near any large bodies of water, as they are the primary thing that makes it unreachable. You can climb tress and etc. Desolate areas are better, because landing on the highway will cause issues. (We chose to launch in New Hampshire, with our ballon intended to land in Central MA. The first shot was pretty close, the second shot landed in southern CT, hopefully our third shot will land in Central MA, but we haven't gotten that far yet)

Relief Valve Necessary?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do all these designs have an internal parachute for use after the balloon pops? What comes to mind is to just put a spring-action pressure relieve valve at the fill nozzle of the balloon, set to perhaps 10% under the experimentally determined burst pressure of the balloon. Then, as the balloon ascends and the differential pressure increases, the relief valve will periodically outgas enough helium to prevent the envelope from bursting. This approach allows one to start with a FULL FILLUP at ground level, and likely achieve much greater altitude than the apparently current scenario of having to operate between the static boundaries of "just enough" fill to ascend at start, and "pop pressure" at what is stated to be about 20 miles up. I'm not a physicist insofar as lift calcs, but common sense would seem to dictate that the pressure relief setup could yield MUCH higher apogees?