This is the kind of thing I dreamed of doing as a kid. Okay, it’s the kind of thing I still think about doing now. I’m not sure how I missed this earlier, but thought it would be worth a post for those of you who might not have seen it yet.
The flight was a collaborative effort between Tomoya Kamiko of Japan and a group in Canada, and the result is absolutely amazing (if not a little shaky–but hey, give the guys some credit here). The video gets really remarkable around 5:42, once you can see the curve of the earth.
From their writeup:
The balloon and camera were launched at 7:44 AM, the balloon burst at 10:51 AM at 107,145 ft. and the camera landed via parachute at 11:40 AM, 89 miles from the launch site after a 3 hr. & 56 min. flight. The camera recorded a total of 4 hrs. & 22 min. of Hi-Def Video before it stopped recording 53 secs after landing, when its 32GB of memory was full.
Looking forward to seeing what the Bear-4 team does next!
The Discovery Channel also covered the event here.