In August of 2019, we decided to send a weather balloon into near space with a 360-degree camera attached to it. Why did we do this? Because we could. Because we wanted to know what the world looked like from 100,000 feet. And because we wanted to build something that shared that perspective with you.
This is a story about launching a camera into space. It’s about following curiosity wherever it leads (or lands), and the unexpected things that happen when we play around at the intersection of creativity and technology. But mostly, it’s about testing the limits of what you can accomplish with a lot of duct tape, and a little ingenuity.
Like any good idea in theory, this one needs testing. So, the team brings a few hundred helium balloons to a city park for a proof of concept. Fuel is inhaled, pedestrians are alarmed, and our resolve is tested.
The team assembles everything they need to send a real (big) weather balloon into near space. Along the way, they realize they’ll need an expert, their luck begins to change, and launch day butterflies quickly become something else: did anyone remember to turn the cameras on?
Turns out the moment of truth can take awhile. The team battles sweat bees, navigates a natural corn maze, and finds out just how precise — and fragile — GPS can be on their quest to recover the payload.
