Nine-year old sends camera into space

Some of you might remember when we reported the two MIT students who managed to take pictures of the curvature of the Earth with about 150 dollars worth of materials. It would appear that they aren’t the only ones, and their efforts have been imitated by a nine-year-old.
                                                                       

Yes, this boy, Isaac Kubas, managed to build the apparatus that took the cool picture which you see to the right. I’m certain from what the mother says that he had some help, at least with the higher math skills.

His invention had a camera that snapped one picture each minute, and they tracked it with a cell phone GPS. They actually lost the signal during their experiment, and thought it was lost somewhere in Illinois. It was actually found about 125 miles away from its starting point of Austin, Texas.

Well, this is definitely one giant step in the life of Isaac Kubas, and he plans on entering his project for his 4H club. Oh man, how would you like to be one of the other kids at that science fair? Do you honestly think that your baking soda volcano will stand a chance to the kid who made a space-faring balloon? I didn’t think so.

Since Isaac is the second person that we have reported on who has done this, then we should really call this hobby something. How about “curvature ballooning”?