Posted on 10/13/2009 9:37:52 AM PDT by Squawk 8888
MIT students snapped the earth from space with a simple camera
One day last spring, Oliver Yeh entertained a wacky daydream: What if he could send a camera way up into the atmosphere to take photos of the earth below?
The MIT student, then a junior, soon became obsessed with making it happen.
He knew he would need help, but several friends were either too busy or just not interested. He asked Justin Lee, a first-year graduate student in mechanical engineering he had met in a fraternity. Lee quickly joined the quest.
“When you have an idea, people often say it’s been done before or it can’t be done,’’ Lee said. “Then it’s up to you to prove that it can be done, or that it can be done better.’’
Last month, the two young men proved it could be done. With low-tech equipment and a low budget, they launched a contraption 17.5 miles into the skies above Sturbridge, where it snapped photos of the earth’s curved edge against the black void of space.
A helium-filled weather balloon lifted the camera, enclosed in a Styrofoam cooler, into the stratosphere.
Five hours later, it parachuted into Worcester, with 4,000 photos from its journey.
The brilliance of the contraption was its simplicity and its cost: $150.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Great story. Plus it’s heartening to hear about some college kids doing something interesting instead of eating Doritos, smoking pot and playing on-line poker.
But taking pictures from space is cool too.
cool bump
I wonder when these young men will be visited by the feds.
—standing on the shoulders of giants who gav us such things as GPS, cellphones, lightweight materials, etc.,-—
This is cool, but I think his “wacky daydream last spring” came about because he read the articles about this group of teens from Spain who did it first.
Heck, my friends and I did the same thing way back in 1960 in high school!
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