Welcome to space.1337arts.com — Project Icarus, home of the original $150 near-space launch!
UPDATE: 8/7/10 We have created a forum. If you have questions, comments, or just want to show your near-space launch, post HERE!
UPDATE: 5/12/10 Check out grassrootsmapping.org! We’re helping citizens to use balloons, kites, and other simple and inexpensive tools to produce their own aerial imagery of the spill… documentation that will be essential for environmental and legal use in coming years.
UPDATE: 10/30/09: Want to do it yourself? Visit GUIDE, a compilation of detailed information regarding what we did for our launch.
Click Here for archive of updates
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***CAUTION/DISCLAIMER: Launching things into the stratosphere can be DANGEROUS! Please contact the FAA before trying any launches (even if they are under 4 lbs.) to make sure your vehicle won’t be entering restricted airspace and PLEASE check the University of Wyoming’sBalloon Trajectory Predictor(or a similar website) to make sure you balloon won’t be landing in the city/a populated area where it might cause significant damage. Also, be sure to test your balloon’s terminal velocity for descent before launching. We tested our parachute by putting eggs inside of our styrofoam box and tossing the box off of a 5 story building. We were not satisfied with the landing speed of our box until the eggs did not break upon the box’s impact.
About Project Icarus
We are a group of MIT students seeking to share the artistic aspects of science with others. On Sept. 2, 2009, we launched a digital camera into near-space to take photographs of the earth from high up above. (see “Flight”)
Several groups have accomplished similar feats (see “Other Launches”), but as far we know, we are the first group ever to:
(1) Complete such a launch on a budget of $150 total. All of our supplies (including camera, GPS tracking, weather balloon, and helium) were purchased for less than a grand total of $150.
(2) Create a launch vehicle without the use of any electronic hacking. We used off-the-shelf items exclusively (i.e., no electronic chips or soldering) to create our launch vehicle.
The results were fantastic. Our ultra low-budget balloon went 17.5 miles high into the uppermost parts of the stratosphere and returned 5 hours later. We tracked the device with GPS and found it some 20 miles away from the launch site.
Check us out on CNN, FOX, ABC! Click here to watch the Fox video, Click here to watch the CNN video. Click here to watch the ABC video
Project Icarus Details:
| Who | Oliver Yeh , Justin Lee, Eric Newton |
| Launch Date/Time | September 2nd, 2009, 11:45 EST |
| Launch Location | Sturbridge, MA - 42.12074, -72.06233 |
| Impact Location | Worcester, MA - 42.25504, -71.71943 |
| Distance Traveled | ~20 miles |
| Altitude Achieved | 98,000 feet, 17.5 miles |
| Helium Used | ~65 cubic feet |
| Weight | ~800g, 28oz |
| Camera | Canon A470 /w chdk open source firmware |
| Batteries | 4 Energizer Ultimate Lithium AA Batteries |
| GPS Reciever | Motorola i290 Prepaid Cellphone (“Boost Mobile”) |
| Tracking Software | Accutracking, Instamapper |
| Flight path | Google Earth kml |
| FAA regulation | Legal as long as payload is under 4 pounds |
**Below is a video for people who cannot access Youtube (e.g., people in China)
read about your project on a Swiss news page, love the idea!
now I know where the news in the Austrian news page came from
read about your project in a swiss newspaper. it’s an amazing and cool lo-tec-project you made, really great!
greetings from switzerland
Camera = $85
Phone = $50 (with contract, that is)
Accutracking software package = $110
Plus whatever you used for your balloon . . . $150 my ass.
$110 for Accutracking?? What site are you looking at?
Accutrack describes itself as a low-cost solution with no contract and no initiation fee – you can get the basic package for a month for $5.99 or get the top shelf product for the crazy price of $9.99. Please demonstrate a little courtesy and thoroughly research your facts prior to spouting off unnecessarily.
GREAT job guys – very inspiring work!!
Its pretty damn cool man, regardless of price. Don’t be a dick.
James your an ass is right, your an idiot
Phone Boost is contract free.. used phone maybe 30 bucks
Accutracker $110 .. free to try..
James, there are many ways to get these items lower than retail price.
You need not be a prick.
Actually Accutracking is free for the first month, and Boost doesn’t use contracts, which is to say there is not ‘contract pricing’. They list a cost breakdown here, and while 40 seems low for the camera, it’s entirely possible they bought it on ebay, or clearance, and the 8GB SD goes for about 15$ at Microcenter(Houston,TX, USA)so it’s possible.
Nicely done
Great project!
It would be nice if you could post some more pictures of the setup.
I’m looking forward to a nice photoset on flickr
Excellent display of enginuity and genious. It just goes to show that you (passive) do not need to have millions in congress funding in order to achieve what you have achieved. Give yourself a pat on the back, your pictures are much better quality than all the other organisations that are doing this. Hell I might even have a go. Just need to figure out the GPS retrieval bit. Congratulations to you both.
I have been playing around with this idea for years – motivated by these guys: . When they did it the off-the-shelf wasn’t quite available.
The i290 is a great GPS device/platform for this kind of tracking, I’m using it on a project right now. I’m surprised how well it tracks even in places where I don’t see any apparent signal – it must just get enough occasionally to burst telemetry. Have you considered http://www.opengts.org for tracking software? It overlays Google Earth or one of many other mapping services, is open-sourced and of course free..
Great Job Gents!!! …Ummm
Question: How many of these floating, popping, dropping Beer Canon Camera coolers, are required to take out a Passenger Jet???!!!
Answer: 1!!!
How can we do this and be safe???!!! Because I want to with a little more gadgetry!!!
Congratulations once again from Hungary, great thinking and execution, guys! I can only think of one downside of your project being repeated by amateurs all over the world though. Please use your wonderful website to urge all your repetitors to be responsible and always retrieve their balloons as they can be a great source of environmental hazard to (marine) wildlife if lost. Thank you!
Hi, I invite you to use http://www.tuxloc.com for tracking the balloon as it goes back to the ground. It’s free. The only downside is that it’s in spanish (we are going to translate it to english sometime in the near future). Please contact me for further assistance. That’s my two cents
Wonderfull job by the way… I’m so happy for you.
Impressive work! I wanted to view the flight path in Google Earth, including the altitude information (by default it is flat on the surface), so I wrote a script to convert the altitude (in feet) info on the Description to the correct format for KML (converted to meters), and now I can see view the path with altitude information! But it is strange, the altitude tops out at around 3.7 miles (19583 ft). Perhaps this was a limitation of the cell phone software you used.
For example, I convert:
<![CDATA[Time: 2009-09-02 10:21:15Speed: 0 mphHeading: NAltitude: 636 feetGPS: 60%Battery: 99%Cell: 100%]]>
-72.06233,42.1207
to:
<![CDATA[Time: 2009-09-02 10:21:15Speed: 0 mphHeading: NAltitude: 636 feetGPS: 60%Battery: 99%Cell: 100%]]>
absolute
-72.06233,42.1207,193.8528
Congratulation, nice job!
Yeaaaaaaaaaaaahh! Alright you guys!
I was a model rocket freak when I was young. Never dreamed of pictures from 20 miles up.
Bring science and art people together? I LIKE that direction. You guys are put together right. Power up!
I can launch a camera with a ZERO cost, you stole all things that you need and the project would cost you ZERO.
Can someone explain why the balloon popped in, what seems to me to be, such a short time? Is this something that can be counted on to happen after a particular period of time, at a certain altitude, etc?
So cool and genuis…. read about your project on a Swiss news. Greetz from Zurich
Hey man, ab ins Weltall! Gratulation aus der Schweiz!!!!
Congratulations!
Nice idea, good job!
Read about the project in a Swiss newspaper:
http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/digital/mobil/Die-billigste-WeltraumExpedition-aller-Zeiten/story/26645091
Saw your story on the CBC website in Canada. http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/09/15/tech-space-student-earth-photo.html
Very nice.
We appreciation that, very much.
Congratulations.