Project Icarus: Near-Space Photography for Under $150

For those who have made the move to digital cameras, an inevitable consequence of the relentless march of technology is that we end up with cameras that are “obsolete” (because the new model has more pixels, less compression, video capabilities, etc.).

So what do we do with those old cameras? How about using them to get a shot we otherwise wouldn't consider going for, because we might lose the camera in the process?{C}

One such project was recently undertaken by MIT students Justin Lee and Oliver Yee, who wanted to take photos of the earth from space. To do this, they used a weather balloon to fly a used Canon A470 to an altitude of over 17 miles. The camera was modified with CHDK open-source firmware to take a picture every 5 seconds. Skiing handwarmers were used to keep the electronics warm enough to keep functioning at those very high altitudes. A Motorola Boost i290 prepaid cell phone with extra batteries and an external antenna was used to provide GPS coordinates of where the camera landed after the flight. Total budget: $148.

More details can be found on the CNN web site (make sure you look at the photo gallery), in the CNN video below, and on the project's official web site 1337arts – make sure you explore the links down the left side, such as Flight Pictures, Hardware and Pre-Launch.

Embedded video from CNN Video

Lee and Yee are not the only amateurs to photograph the earth from space; recently, a crew of four Spanish students pulled off a similar feat, and 1337arts has a page with links of other launches.

What stuck with me (aside from the sheer audacity of the project) was the aforementioned idea of using old cameras to get “impossible” shots – such as going over a waterfall etc. On the video side, when inexpensive DV video cameras first started appearing years ago (which were aimed at consumers, yet shot video good enough to broadcast), some crazy people such as Scott Billups started treating them as disposable cameras to situate where you would never place a human camera operator or an expensive camera – such as in the path of a monster truck.

Just sayin'…