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Make: Technology on Your Time Volume 24
book

Make: Technology on Your Time Volume 24

by Mark Frauenfelder
October 2010
Beginner
176 pages
8h 7m
English
Make: Community
Content preview from Make: Technology on Your Time Volume 24

Weather Balloon Space Probes

Sense, signal, and snap photos in the stratosphere.

BY JOHN BAICHTAL | ILLUSTRATION BY JAMES PROVOST

A bunch of hackers drive into the desert with a trunk full of equipment: a weather balloon, a tank of helium, and a styrofoam cooler loaded with cameras and sensors. After filling the balloon, they release it and watch it hurtle skyward, the cooler and a parachute dangling beneath.

The hackers track the balloon on laptops as it rises to black-sky altitudes 20 miles up, whereupon the balloon bursts and the payload floats down. Team members on dirt bikes race to recover the package, checking their mobile phones for SMS texts containing GPS coordinates of the landing site.

While this sounds like a scene from some hacker ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781680456226Errata Page