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Comments: 215 +-   Students Take Pictures From Space On $150 Budget on Sunday September 13, @01:31PM

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday September 13, @01:31PM
from the i-can-see-my-house-from-here dept.
education
hardhack
space
science
An anonymous reader writes "Two MIT students have successfully photographed the earth from space on a strikingly low budget of $148. Perhaps more significantly, they managed to accomplish this feat using components available off-the-shelf to the average layperson, opening the door for a new generation of amateur space enthusiasts. The pair plan to launch again soon and hope that their achievements will inspire teachers and students to pursue similar endeavors."
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  • Groups like EOSS [eoss.org] have been doing this for at least 30 years, probably more. It's very common for a balloon launch to be a featured event in a ham radio conference. Their budgets per payload are similar, although they are able to do more technical work than featured in the MIT students work and often design their own radios, command devices, etc. None of this, though, is out of the range of a dedicated amateur. Note that there is a software-defined GPS [gpscreations.com] in development that might be the best way to get around the 20K foot altitude limit of consumer GPS devices. Its component cost is pretty low, despite the $495 cost charged for an assembled device at that site.

    • Re:This is hardly anything new (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cptdondo (59460) on Sunday September 13, @01:44PM (#29406563)
      But this is in range of a middle school science teacher. That's the beauty of it! Once you break the $500 dollar limit, our underfunded schools in the US can't afford it. Heck, the elementary school my kids go to was happy to received a $200 check I won at a local race. For $150, these kinds of parts can be built using donated stuff. Many people have cell phones they no longer use. Many people have digital cameras they don't use. I can see doing this with some donated materials for $100. Plus the technology is there - no custom built ham radios, just "ordinary" technology we all use on a daily basis. It brings space down to ordinary kids. It would be great if these guys provided drawings and what control they usd for the camera and see if we can launch this at our school.
      • This was in the range of a high-school teacher before. Indeed, there have been many high-school launches. Using donated parts doesn't really cut it. The camera has to be one of a few specific models that can run an Open Source download. The phone can't be just any one, unfortunately.

        By the way, use of the phone at altitude violates FCC regulations and does a denial-of-service attack on cell sites because sites all of the way to the horizon are receiving that frequency.

        • Re:This is hardly anything new (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Plunky (929104) on Sunday September 13, @02:08PM (#29406735)

          By the way, use of the phone at altitude violates FCC regulations and does a denial-of-service attack on cell sites because sites all of the way to the horizon are receiving that frequency.

          I guess, if they thought of it, they could set the phone to not transmit unless it was under a set height and falling. That could save battery power too..

      • Re:This is hardly anything new (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Rorschach1 (174480) on Sunday September 13, @02:03PM (#29406695) Homepage

        I think the hardware investment for my balloon project was about $300:

        http://n1vg.net/balloon [n1vg.net]

        I've got a new payload sitting here ready to go that's a lot cleaner and simpler, and has a 2-hour video capacity. Everything in the payload is off the shelf (granted, the radio/tracker is off my own shelf, it's one of my company's products) except for a DB9 connector and a few wires that took a few minutes to solder together. The housing is the top half of a magnum wine shipper, and all of the components (battery, radio, GPS) just wedge in between the foam pieces intended to hold the neck of the bottle. The camcorder is held in with rubber bands:

        http://n1vg.net/images/payload1.jpg [n1vg.net]
        http://n1vg.net/images/payload2.jpg [n1vg.net]
        http://n1vg.net/images/payload3.jpg [n1vg.net]

        The acrylic window that goes over the end took me about 3 minutes to fabricate on a CNC milling machine and could be easily and cheaply replicated.

        It'd be cheaper to build a transmit-only version of this system, but having a receiver lets you do useful stuff like control a cutdown device. This particular payload doesn't have one yet, but it can be as simple as a 1-watt resistor that you drive at 3 watts for several seconds to melt through a Nylon or Spectra cord. Maybe an extra buck worth of hardware.

        I might launch this thing as soon as next month if I can find the time. Possibly from the Mojave desert again, or maybe from the Cuyama Valley, a little closer to home. Ground crew and chase team volunteers are always welcome.

        At some point I'd like to have a ready-to-fly kit to sell at a reasonable price to schools, along with enough instructional materials to get them started. I just don't have the time for it right now.

    • Re:This is hardly anything new (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Kira-Baka (463765) on Sunday September 13, @01:51PM (#29406607) Homepage

      Some people provide better images [natrium42.com] too. The site I've linked even provides videos.

    • Hi Bruce! You going to DCC this month?

      The altitude limit isn't universal, and seems to be dependent on how the manufacturer reads the regs. Off the top of my head, I know the Garmin GPS 18 and 18x (with current firmware) and the Trimble Copernicus work at over 100,000'. As far as I know, nothing from SiRF does unless you have special firmware, and good luck getting those guys to even talk to you. Here's a table with some test results:

      http://showcase.netins.net/web/wallio/GPSrcvrsvs60kft.htm [netins.net]

      I use the GPS

      • Re:This is hardly anything new (Score:5, Insightful)

        by shimage (954282) on Sunday September 13, @03:52PM (#29407491)
        It's not new. There is a balloon class at the University of Washington. They launch a weather balloon with "payloads" designed (sort of, anyway) and built by students from an airport in the middle of nowhere (well, Central Washington) at the end of the class. The professors handle telemetry, which no doubt costs more than $150, but since the bandwidth is so low, they can't telemeter images anyway, so recovery is required. Incidentally, every payload has been recovered so far. Three or four years ago, an ambitious student that knew a bit more than most about digital electronics strapped a camera onto the payload just for shits and giggles (yes, self-powered and rigged to trigger every minute or so). The images he got back were pretty amazing, so after that the professors started offering extra credit for cameras, and every year at least one group gets a good set of pictures. In fact, last year they got one on the way up of an airplane that came a bit closer than it should have. The reason why no one has heard of this before is because no one thinks it's interesting enough to tell the press about; except MIT students, who apparently think that everything they do is hot shit.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by YrWrstNtmr (564987)
          It's not as sexy to report "University of Kentucky students take pictures from space on $150 budget".

          Actually, I'd expect MIT students to do stuff like this. Podunk U students doing it would be more newsworthy.

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by moosesocks (264553)

              It's not as sexy to report "University of Kentucky students take pictures from space on $150 budget".

              Actually, I'd expect MIT students to do stuff like this. Podunk U students doing it would be more newsworthy.

              Yeah, no smart kids outside MIT.

              You're a fucking asshole, you know that? Total fucking gaping asshole.

              Hm. Can't tell which one is the actual troll.

              MIT's a good school, no doubt -- easily one of the best. However, I will agree that the amount of praise it receives in the press (and by the general public) is hyperbolic and tremendously overstated.

              The one thing I'll concede is that MIT's marketing department must be excellent.

              (Full disclaimer: I graduated from a public university, and have a great deal of respect for MIT. However, I'm %*#ing sick of reading job postings that contain the phrase "We are only

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Bruce Perens (3872) *
        Well, this phone was from Boost Mobile, a pay-as-you-go service. I have Net10, and they have not objected to my taking phones out of service early. Indeed, the way their service works, if you don't like your phone at all, buying a new one at monthly renewal time works out best.

        Net10 disables the USB data functionality on all of their phones. So, using the more expensive Boost would be necessary.

  • Damage on landing? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jcr (53032) <jcr@mac.cUMLAUTom minus punct> on Sunday September 13, @01:45PM (#29406569) Journal

    Their site mentioned that the antenna of the phone got embedded in the ground, and it's not clear from the pictures if they had a parachute on it at all, or if it was just too small.

    -jcr

    • What a euphemism: "It didn't crash-land, it just rapidly embedded into the ground." Better copyright that before the airlines use it.

    • It's great that they were able to use a cheap phone for this, but it's worth noting that many (probably most, in my experience) GPS receivers will NOT work properly above 60,000 feet. Some stop reporting their position until they come back down, some just report the wrong altitude, and some lock up completely. As long as you don't get one in that last category it's usually good enough for recovery, but you really need to do some research first if you want accurate tracking through the whole flight.

      And ham

        • Re:Damage on landing? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Bigjeff5 (1143585) on Sunday September 13, @03:06PM (#29407183)

          And far beyond the scope of the project.

          The whole point was to do this without any sort of hacking, it's all off the shelf parts that a 3rd grade teacher could put together. It was the whole point of the exercise.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by GameMaster (148118)

          Actually, it's even worse that that. US regulations say that the receiver can work over 60,000 feet and can work at over a certain speed limit but that it isn't allowed to do both at the same time. The idea is to stop them from being used as guidance for low cost ballistic missiles. The problem is that many of the GPS manufacturers got lazy and just set their equipment to stop working if either condition occurred. In this case, it' really isn't the fault of the US regulations.

  • My ACME Slingshot Cam may actually have a chance. I'm inspired again.

  • ... they used a cellphone GPS? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by popo (107611) on Sunday September 13, @01:52PM (#29406613) Homepage

    "The cell phone was secured to the camera and constantly reported its GPS location via text message."

    Sure the GPS part of the phone would work, but is anyone skeptical of the SMS bit? How could this possibly have been within tower range?

  • Safety? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Noodlenose (537591) on Sunday September 13, @01:53PM (#29406615) Homepage Journal
    While I love the low-cost aspect of this project, I am worried about the safety aspects: No air traffic control registering, and how did they prevent the bloody thing from hitting another human on the way down?

    NN

    • Re:Safety? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Bruce Perens (3872) * <[moc.snerep] [ta] [ecurb]> on Sunday September 13, @02:03PM (#29406703) Homepage Journal
      You can inform the FAA to issue a NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) and you can get your flight permitted, all of the ham groups know how to do this. You can get a fine for not informing the FAA if your payload is over a certain weight.

      The terminal velocity of falling objects varies according to the weight of the object and the air resistance. A foam cooler and some ropes and torn balloon falling from altitude don't go very fast. Note that their descent took 40 minutes, and it was probably faster in thin air than thick.

      There was an interesting mythbusters on falling bullets. They couldn't get much force out of them.

      • Re:Safety? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Oswald (235719) on Sunday September 13, @02:20PM (#29406823)

        You can inform the FAA to issue a NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) and you can get your flight permitted, all of the ham groups know how to do this. You can get a fine for not informing the FAA if your payload is over a certain weight.

        You can, and you should, provide this information to the FAA. Rest assured, however, that no meaningful action will be taken in response. It's all based on the big sky theory (which, it should be noted, has a pretty good record in this matter).

  • This is a fairly standard high-altitude photography method, that is just being hyped up. You attached a camera to a helium balloon. Whoop-de-fucking-doo. Doesn't have anything to do with space.

  • Great idea! Now I'm thinking about more balloons and a DSLR with a circular polarizing filter...

  • >Yeh stressed the groundbreaking nature of their work

    Ah, best not tell him that the BBC science show "Bang Goes the Theory" did exactly that a few weeks back. Photo's on the way up looked great, and it must have been fun tracking and then retrieving it. I think it would make a great sunday activity.

  • This has been done numerous times.

    But speaking of low cost space flight. I've seen lots of tricks used to protect the equipment from being burned up in the atmosphere... have there been any attempts to exploit a reaction with the earths atmosphere and harness the resulting energy?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by ivan_w (1115485)

      Well, somehow, it is already being exploited..

      It is used to *reduce* the overall kinetic energy of a re-entering bolide so that the acceleration (and hereby force) to which the payload is submitted at impact doesn't damage said payload.

      And also.. the overall energy dissipated during atmospheric re-entry cannot exceed the amount of energy used to put the object wherever - and at whatever velocity - it was before re-entry. So if you are worried about energy expenditure.. just don't launch !

      --Ivan

    • Re:Yawn (Score:4, Informative)

      by Megane (129182) on Sunday September 13, @04:37PM (#29407797)
      Atmospheric burn-up is caused as you lose orbital velocity when you contact the atmosphere. As balloons and their payloads were never in orbit in the first place, there is no worry about anything burning up.
  • Are these guys being a liiiiiiiitle economical with the truth here.

    I realise that mobile phones are dropping in price all the time, but to buy a phone from a store that has GPS built in ...... for $50? Did they accidentally drop a "0" off the end of that price?

  • High School Students got better photos for $100 (Score:4, Informative)

    by nunoloureiro (1162373) on Sunday September 13, @02:30PM (#29406915)
    Some High School Students from Bilbao, Spain, did the same thing earlier this year for less than $100. Looking at the photos, it seems they got better shots.

    Story here:
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5005022/Teens-capture-images-of-space-with-56-camera-and-balloon.html [telegraph.co.uk]

    Photos here:
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/meteotek08/sets/ [flickr.com]

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Gordonjcp (186804)

        Students from Cambridge University have been doing this for a couple of years now.

        • Re:NOT from space (Score:4, Insightful)

          by icebike (68054) on Sunday September 13, @03:18PM (#29407251)

          The boundary of space was 65 miles (100km) but NASA pushed it higher after 150 miles, mostly out of a fit of pique following SpaceShipOne's successful claim on the X-Prize.

          In any event, 20 miles is pretty impressive, but its still not Space, although, as Sarah would say, you can see it from there...

      • 62mi / 100km (Score:4, Informative)

        by imtheguru (625011) on Sunday September 13, @02:14PM (#29406771)
        According to the Federation Internationale D'espace, space begins at 62 miles, about 100 kilometers. Often referred to as the 62 mile club.

        Cheers.

      • 100 km (62.x miles) is where NASA considers space to start for purposes of being labeled an astronaut. That's where the Space X prize boundary was, I believe for that reason.

      • Re:NOT from space (Score:4, Informative)

        by arth1 (260657) on Sunday September 13, @02:27PM (#29406877) Homepage Journal

        Correct. A balloon can't be in space, simply because there must be atmosphere for the balloon to be lighter than, or it can't rise. Never mind that they tend to expand and explode before they reach that theoretical height...

        Normally, what we consider the start of space is around 10 times as far out as the record for helium balloons. Even hydrogen balloons can get nowhere near space. If you could make a balloon filled with hard vacuum, you would be able to almost, but not quite, reach space.

        So the correct tag for this article is !space

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by 32771 (906153)

      Not anymore my friend, not anymore. Not since the nineties at least.

      Oh and by the way:

      "You and I in a little toy shop
      Buy a bag of balloons with the money we've got.
      Set them free at the break of dawn
      'Til one by one, they were gone.
      Back at base, bugs in the software
      Flash the message, Something's out there.
      Floating in the summer sky.
      99 red balloons go by."

      Bugs in the software, eh? Well, they may still have them. Maybe it is still a relevant song.

      I never knew there was an english version:

      http://www.eightyeighty [eightyeightynine.com]

    • Re:Obligatory (Score:4, Interesting)

      by russotto (537200) on Sunday September 13, @02:53PM (#29407089) Journal

      Having FAA and FCC investigators show up at your dormroom? Priceless
      Really, one would think MIT students would know better.

      If everyone actually followed all the regulations we have nowadays, no one smaller than Boeing would ever get anything done.

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