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Wednesday, September 16, 2009

MIT students beat NASA on beer-money budget

Interesting story on Wired about how two MIT students launched a camera successfully into space for $148.

The two students (from MIT, of course) put together a low-budget rig to fly a camera high enough to photograph the curvature of the Earth. Instead of rockets, boosters and expensive control systems, they filled a weather balloon with helium and hung a styrofoam beer cooler underneath to carry a cheap Canon A470 compact camera. Instant hand warmers kept things from freezing up and made sure the batteries stayed warm enough to work.Of course, all this would be pointless if the guys couldn’t find the rig when it landed, so they dropped a prepaid GPS-equipped cellphone inside the box for tracking. READ IT

(Thanks Michael P.) CONTACT: Leave me a Houston or Texas media news tip | COMMENT: Click to leave your thoughts on this post here