© Justin Lee and Oliver Yeh
(via Cnet.com) I'm a big fan of the d-i-y, especially when it's extreme...like images of Earth from space taken with a Canon A470 point and shoot. Two Macgyver-like M.I.T. students launched their camera, lodged in a Styrofoam cooler into space (well almost). Hoisted by a weather balloon (but a really cool weather balloon, not some stupid fame-seeking hoax kind of weather balloon), the camera made it to 93,000 feet and took some amazing photos of our planet. The last thing I put in a cooler were some ice-cold beverages.
The two students, Justin Lee and Oliver Yeh, named the mission Project Icarus. They hacked the camera to add a feature called an intervalometer (how science-fictiony), which makes the camera take a photo every 5 seconds. The best part about the whole thing, it was done for under $150. Near-space travel, on the cheap. Totally cool. I have got to get up into space one of these days, just in something a little more substantial than a cooler.
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