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Father and son send iPhone towards space

Father and son send iPhone towards space

The Brooklyn Space Program is celebrating a successful first mission. And if you’ve not heard of the program, that may be because it is a somewhat lower-budget affair than NASA.

The Brooklyn Space Program consists solely of seven-year-old Max Geissbuhler and his father Luke, plus some consumer electronics and a large dose of ingenuity.

After a reported eight months of research, the pair created a space vessel consisting largely of a takeout food container and a weather balloon. They then sent it skywards with two passengers: a high definition camcorder and an iPhone.

Contrary to some reports, the iPhone was not used for the filming. Instead the Geissbuhlers used it as a GPS device so that they could locate the craft if and when it returned to earth.

Fortunately that proved a smart move: the balloon finally burst 70 minutes after takeoff when the craft had reached around 100,000 feet. It then descended for half an hour (at 150 miles per hour despite having a parachute) and landed a mere 30 miles from the launch site. That’s where a dual instrument approach paid off: while the iPhone led the pair to the correct coordinates, it was the recording indicator light on the camera that confirmed the craft was fifty feet above ground in the branches of a tree.

If you want to be particularly pedantic, the craft did not make it into space. At a peak of 100,000 feet (30 kilometers), it was well short of the 80 kilometer mark used by US astronauts to define space travel, or the Karman line, a point around 100 kilometers high where ordinary aircraft could no longer continue to gain altitude.

But as the video shows, the craft certainly reached a high enough point to provide a spectacular view of the Earth’s curvature. The pair will be selling the recording for $25, but have released a seven minute highlight package:

[Thanks: http://tech.blorge.com]

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