Sending a Balloon Into Near Space
An awesome high-altitude balloon project from a SparkFun customer.
We're pretty into launching stuff up into the sky. It's amazing that these days, you don't need a NASA-esque budget to send something into space (at least near-space). In the past, we've mentioned Nate's high-altitude balloon project and more recently (like, yesterday) we blogged about launching a rocket into the sky with our new ultra-small 9DoF Stick IMU. Now we have an awesome project from SparkFun customer Jonathan.
A view from near space - you can see the Cortez Sea off in the distance.
Jonathan used a number of SparkFun products to build an awesome high-altitude balloon. Namely he used the 6DoF Razor IMU and two XTend 900 Modems for communcation (plus a few other bits and pieces).
Brrr...it's cold up there!
He sent his balloon up into near-space and gathered some awesome data and pictures. Unfortunately the GPS stopped working at around 18,000 meters for some reason, but the data was impressive regardless.
Visualizing the balloon's descent - very cool.
Jonathan did an awesome job taking his data and putting it in a great visual format (see the picture above). It's great to see more and more people venturing into high-altitude balloon projects - awesome work, Jonathan!
