Two students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say they were able to take photographs of the Earth from space using a camera and a balloon.
The Boston Globe said Monday MIT students Oliver Yeh and Justin Lee were able to use a digital camera to take photos from 17.5 miles up in the atmosphere by placing the device inside a Styrofoam cooler attached to a helium-filled weather balloon.
After taking 4,000 photographs high above Sturbridge, Mass., the camera safely parachuted to the ground using a plastic parachute.
Yeh, 20, said he and Lee, 23, conducted the experiment at a cost of only $150 because of a shared longing to better understand the world around them.
"We just like to explore and understand stuff,'' Yeh told the Globe of his September experiment.
Astronaut Daniel Tani of NASA's Johnson Space Center applauded the men's ingenuity in creating such a simple design for such a complex experiment.
"It's remarkable,'' Tani told the Globe. "What tickled me is that for $150 they were able to go to 93,000 feet.''
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