Using a high-altitude weather balloon bought for less than $100, 26-year-old Mark Ireland and his girlfriend Cassie Phelps sent Santa up into the space. Project called Stratodean is an organisation based in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire in the UK which sends high altitude weather balloons to the edge of space (between 70,000 and 110,000 feet in the stratosphere). The balloon suspends a camera with a parachute and a GPS system attached so that when the balloon bursts it […]
Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad, both 17, have sent a Lego man into space using a home-stitched parachute and spare parts found on Craigslist. Two Canadian teenagers attached the two-inch astronaut clutching a Canadian flag to a helium weather balloon, which they sent 80,000 feet into the air – three times the height of a commercial jet’s cruising altitude.
It may not look like much, but the blue spot near the centre of this image is Zeta Ophiuchi, a hot star 20 times larger than the sun. Ploughing its way through a large cloud of interstellar dust and gas, when seen in visible light it appears as a relatively dim red star surrounded by other dim stars and no dust.
