Five friends launched a GoPro camera and a smartphone on a weather balloon near the Grand Canyon in Arizona back in 2013. The group lost track of the balloon and recovered that footage two years after, revealing a stunning footage of the Earth.
The June 2013 expedition of the team aimed to capture aerial views of the Grand Canyon through a GoPro Hero3, Sony Camcorder and Samsung Galaxy Note II phone. They planned to keep track of the helium weather balloon's position through GPS monitoring but the GPS signal failed and the balloon came back to Earth without the camera after 38 minutes, TVNZ reported.
During a flight time of 90 minutes, the balloon reached a maximum altitude of about 18 miles before it fell to the desert floor where it remained for two years since the group had a problem with the GPS and couldn't track the camera.
“The problem was that the coverage map we were relying on (looking at you, AT&T) was not accurate, so the phone never got signal as it came back to Earth, and we never heard from it,” the user trexarmsss wrote in a Reddit post.
The phone landed on sand which is about 50 miles from the original launch point.
“TWO YEARS LATER, in a twist of ironic fate, a woman who works at AT&T was on a hike one day and spotted our phone in the barren desert,” trexarmsss continued. “She brings it to an AT&T store, and they identify my friend’s SIM card. We got the footage and data a few weeks later!”
A YouTube video shows how the group prepared for the expedition as well as the ascent and descent of the balloon. The camera view gradually changes from a ground view, to a bird’s view, to a plane’s and then to an astronaut’s perspective, Fox News reported.
In the video, it showcased a beautiful glimpse of a huge stretch of Earth and the breathtaking images of Grand Canyon at 98,644 feet. For a total time of 1 hour and 38 minutes through wind currents and back to Earth, we were given a mind-blowing view of the earth.
The team is comprised of Bryan Chan, Ved Chirayath, Ashish Goel, Paul Tarantino, and Tyler Reid who also revealed that aside from the video, they will be posting still images from the phone.
