Brit Conquers Space - With Helium Balloon (with videooooo)
Robert Harrison has been able to send his £500 device 22 miles above the earth's surface - a height that can only be reached by a rocket or weather balloon.
Over the last two years, the IT director from Highburton in West Yorkshire has launched 12 high-altitude balloons with a simple Canon camera attached.
Mr Harrison stumbled on the idea when he tried to take aerial photographs of his house using a remote control helicopter.
When his experiment failed, he started to look into high-altitude weather balloons on the internet, launching his first device - Icarus I - in 2008.
The camera captures the curvature of the Earth
He programmed the camera, using free software downloaded from the internet, to take eight photos and a video every five minutes before switching into standby mode.
Mr Harrison, 38, uses GPS tracking technology to monitor the camera as it automatically parachutes back to earth after reaching the 22-mile high mark.
The pictures are so impressive that Nasa has reportedly been in touch, telling the father-of-three it would have spent millions to get the same results.
"A guy phoned up who worked for Nasa who was interested in how we took the pictures," Mr Harrison told The Times newspaper.
"He wanted to know how the hell we did it. He thought we used a rocket. They said it would have cost them millions of dollars."
March 25, 2010
VIEW VIDEO