Watch: Breathtaking video from Go Pro that had VANISHED at the edge of space
A group of friends launched a high-altitude near-space balloon a few miles from Tuba City, Arizona. The amazing footage of the Grand Canyon area was LOST, then found two years later by an Arizona hiker. Spoiler: It is the most incredible video from the Grand Canyon as seen from Space.
Weather Balloons plus Go Pro Cameras equal breathtaking video footage.
A Practice that has become ever more popular, attaching high-definition cameras to weather balloons and sending them to the ‘edge of space’ is something totally cool.
This happened a while back when students from the Stanford University decided to attach a camera to a weather balloon and send it into space.
The plan was this: the weather balloon was supposed to float around 19 miles above Earth before parachuting back safely. In order to find the weather balloon once it landed, the students attached a cell phone programmed to broadcast a signal once it landed on Earth.
Students were thinking on suing the signal to find the camera and check out the amazing footage their camera had captured.
However, after parachuting back to Earth, ET never phoned home, which led the students to believe they had programmed the phone incorrectly or perhaps miscalculated the balloon’s trajectory.
For the students, their program was lost, and they had forgotten about their super-cool project that didn’t go through successfully.
However, a few years later, a hiker found the phone and camera which had parachuted back to Earth and tracked back the owners using the memory card.
To the surprise of everyone, the footage was INTACT.
It turned out that the phone wasn’t destroyed but did not manage to get a signal, as it landed in a remote part of the desert where—to the surprise of many—there wasn’t coverage. Hey, I can’t get coverage in my bathroom. :/
So, what was believed to have been a failed mission turned out to be a breathtaking video footage of the Grand Canyon as seen from space.
I’ve never seen a more beautiful view from the Grand Canyon than this one.
The wait was really worth it and the video and images that the camera obtained are first class.
In fact, I’m so excited that I want to grab myself a Go Pro camera and weather balloon and try to film something too.
Weather Balloons are specifically designed to make it through high-altitude conditions, floating above Earth.
Here’s a view from an altitude of around 7 miles:
via GIPHY
The weather balloon needed around 90 minutes to reach ts highest point—around 18 miles when the balloon exploded as seen here:
via GIPHY
After falling for around thirty minutes, the Go Pro camera and the Mobile phone which was not destroyed, landed in a remote area, where they remained for two years until they were eventually found.
But an image—or a video in this case—is worth a million words so check out the awesome video uploaded to YouTube by Bryan Chan, one of the students who participated in the project:
Flight details:
Max altitude: 98,664 ft (30.1 km)
Time of flight: 1 hour, 38 minutes
Payload: GoPro Hero3, Sony Camcorder, Samsung Galaxy Note II phone
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