WCNC, the Charlotte NBC affiliate, put some consumer grade sports cameras inside a lunchbox, tied it to a helium filled balloon and launched it into the atmosphere, just because they could.
According to KVUE, WCNC’s sister station, Corrie Harding, WCNC’s news director, saw a video on YouTube of two people launching a beer can into space. He wanted to see if his station could do the same thing.
With the help of Hackerspace Charlotte, a collaborative space for people who like to tinker with technology, the station took two GoPro cameras, the lunchbox, a helium filled balloon, a 3D model of an astronaut with meteorologist Larry Sprinkle’s face attached and let it go to see how high it would reach. You can watch the video of the whole process after the jump.
The balloon got up to 102,457 feet before popping, sending both the cameras and the astronaut plummeting to Earth. The package took 3 1/2 hours to ascend and 45 minutes to fall. The station found it lying in several acres of briars 172 miles from where it launched 25 days after launching the balloon, .