The View from 100,000 Feet

By Nancy Atkinson - May 23, 2011 12:52 PM UTC | Planetary Science

I love these student projects that send a camera via a balloon high in the atmosphere to film the view of Earth below. Here's another from a group of German students who were able to film in HD from an altitude of more than 100,000 ft. (30,480 meters). Enjoy the music, too.

"Our challenge was to survive ambient air pressures as low as 1/100th of an atmosphere, temperatures as low as -60°C and finally to locate and recover the Camera," Tobias Lohf wrote UT. "We had a HD-Cam, GPS tracker and a heating pad on board, and all the construction had a total weight of about 1kg."

The rest of the team included Marcel Dierig, Tobias Stodieck, Tristan Eggers and Marvin Rissiek and they hope to inspire other students to try the same project. "All you need need is a camera, weather balloon and Duct Tape," they said.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com