I would have to say that recovering the balloon package is my favorite part of launching high altitude balloons. The whole process reminds me a bit of playing neighborhood baseball as a child. Inevitably, the ball would get hit into another neighbors yard or get caught in a tree or someplace inaccessible, and then a small adventure would ensue as we went about trying to get it back. As we get older, our sense of scale and focus changes, and we find less and less wonder in our usual, immediate surroundings. But every time we launch one of these balloons, eastern Colorado suddenly becomes my childhood neighborhood as I set out to search for the camera package with my friends. And every time, it is an adventure.
We do our best to select launch sites and wind conditions that will provide a safe trajectory away from heavily populated areas and airspace. And we label the camera package with our contact information and non-hazardous markings. But even with all that, things don’t always go to plan and we end up confronted with a situation like this!
It turned out that the balloon package landed in a horse corral and the shredded balloon covered the “Non” portion of the “Non-Hazardous” marking. Within 20 minutes of landing, two nice women noticed it and called the police due to the suspicious hazardous markings. Thanks to our trusty SPOT messenger, we made it there before Johnny-Law, and as Ricky Ricardo used to say, we had some esplainin’ to do. We happily shared the purpose of the mission and the joy that we witnessed when the balloon was launched in front of dozens of elementary and middle school children. We even dismantled the package to prove to the officer that we were on the up-and-up, which was sufficient for him to continue on his way. And we finally reviewed the photos with our new friends and promised that we would follow up with an email link to the photos.
This morning will mark the third flight of the camera/SPOT balloon package to the edge of space in 2010. The flight is another education and public outreach (EPO) opportunity that is taking place in conjunction with the Boulder History Museum. They are working with a local middle school to film and produce a short documentary about scientists in Boulder and Lars and the atmospheric scientists at LASP fit the bill. Or maybe they just wanted some cool pictures of the edge of space. Anyway, below is the map that will update automatically with the balloon’s location after its 9am MDT launch. Enjoy!
My interest in flying a tethered balloon with a camera system started back in July of 2006. Since then, I designed and built a sophisticated camera system, purchased a 7 foot diameter helium balloon, and have talked about flying it over Boulder to take aerial photographs. Almost 4 years have passed with enough yak shaving and procrastination for me to vow to finally do this on not one, but two New Year’s resolutions. I can finally and proudly say that I flew the balloon and the camera system over my South Boulder neighborhood and it was a tremendous success!
My initial interest in the subject goes way back to my Master’s Thesis that involved the design of a micro air vehicle control system for DARPA. The justification for the thesis work was that there is a strong need within the military (and other agencies) for visual knowledge of an environment that is best provided by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). However, UAVs can be difficult to operate, so much research has been invested in developing autonomous UAVs that can operate on their own, which is exactly how I was funded for my research project.
Flash forward to 2006. I no longer live in Boston, but I am still working in the aerospace industry. Instead of designing control systems to fly aerial vehicles, I am designing control systems to point scientific payloads on satellites in earth orbit. I pick up my first issue of Make magazine while visiting my parents and am immediately blown away by the advancements in low-cost, robotic-like electronics that are available to the average hobbyist that used to be top-shelf military grade components. I subscribe to the magazine and request all back issues, which included their premiere issue focused on kite aerial photography. I have an epiphany. Kites can fly above the earth in a relatively fixed location and orientation without any sophisticate control system, which allows people to focus on building camera payloads to take incredible photographs. I am convinced that I have short-circuited all of the work that has gone into UAV control system development. I realize that there isn’t always wind to fly a kite. Duh. I think back to my childhood and remember helium balloons. I am a kid again and having fun with a balloon. It is the answer. I am convinced that the answer is to fly a helium balloon with a camera instead of investing precious time and money on developing sophisticated autonomous UAVs. I research the market and learn that three companies visibly cater to this type of market: Southern Balloon Works, SkyDoc Balloons, and Allsopp Helikites. All of these companies do impressive work and had my epiphany long ago. But they don’t design precision pointing systems for NASA, I do. I convince myself that I can buy a balloon from one of these vendors, build a sophisticated camera payload, and point it better and for cheaper than anyone else using low-cost hobby electronics.
We are now in July 2006. I spend some of my free time furthering research on the topic, ordering a balloon from Southern Balloon Works, buying a Canons S3is camera, buying and learning to work a BasicStamp-based Parallax BoeBot, buying a camera cradle from ServoCity, and ultimately building a pretty nice semi-autonomous gimbaled camera system to fly on the balloon. Of course, there were issues or I wouldn’t be writing this in 2010. The real-time video downlink from the camera had numerous issues. I eventually worked out the kinks between the RC transmitter and the video downlink and wound up with a reliable RC/video system. I also got involved in mentoring a FIRST robotics team which was a valuable experience, but that also ate into my free time for such extracurricular nerdy activities. Ultimately, it came down to priorities and focus. There are a few things I can say with complete conviction and one is that when we make something in our life a priority or if it occupies our focus, it will be done well and it will be done quickly. So although you could say that requirements creep caused me to try to make the system too autonomous or I got caught shaving a yak, when it comes down to it, flying a helium balloon just wasn’t a priority and didn’t occupy my focus for the past two years despite the fact that I really wished it would.
Sometimes, things in life don’t go as planned and we have to accept them for what they are, decide to fight against them, or a little of both. When it came to this balloon project, I would like to think that I went with a little of both. First, I was fortuitous to become friends with Sam and Lars, who have helped me tremendously in literally getting this project off the ground. Second, I made the conscious choice to abandon the lost cause of a BasicStamp controlled “smart” camera system and to pursue a remote controlled camera system that was well within my means. What was amazing was that after making that choice, it only took three weeks to make the adjustments to the system, get my friends onboard with the project, and ultimately fly my gimbaled balloon camera system. You can probably begin to understand now why I am proud of this accomplishment.
Instead of explaining the as-built system in writing, I thought it would be easier to watch it in action. So check out the overview video below.
And now onto the premiere flight of my tethered balloon camera system.
As you can see from the video, I think the first flight of this system went very well. The as-built system functioned as I had hoped, but the balloon proved to be much less stable than I expected. In some ways, that actually makes things more fun, since it provides me with a justification to improve upon the system :-) It may not be the game changing invention that I dreamed of years ago, but I am glad that I dreamed and proud that I had the courage to try to make it come true.
Be sure to check out the photo album to get a sense of the quality of the photos. There are some fun ones in there! The photo below highlights the improved resolution that near earth aerial photography can provide compared to satellite imagery. Also, if you want to see this photo and two others in Google Earth, down the this KMZ file.
If you read the pre-flight article, you’d remember that I ended by saying, “Let's hope for the Luck o' the Irish for the ole' balloon!” As it turned out, this balloon flight definitely needed the luck of the Irish. After a perfect launch into a blue-bird Colorado sky, we casually began to follow the SPOT location updates from the balloon towards the expected southeast landing location. Things were going great, almost too great. We followed it to Kiowa, CO and surmised that it must have been descending based on the time aloft and SPOT update cadence after its high altitude blackout. An impromptu picnic ensued on a prairie hillside while we waited for another SPOT update, but it never came. After half an hour, we decided to continue driving and search for it roadside, but that only got us as far as the Sproch Cemetary for another wait and rest session. But there would be no more updates from the SPOT. It was a beautiful day and we were enjoying ourselves, but it was difficult to accept that the balloon was lost and we might never know why it fell off the radar. After verifying with SPOT tech support that there servers were still functioning, we did another slow road side search while driving back to the last known location. A local rancher allowed us on his land and we fanned out looking for a needle in a haystack, or in this case, a camera in a hayfield. It was amazing how many small objects appeared to be the balloon, its parachute, or the styrofoam package. And there was always one more hill just over yonder that might have hidden our treasure. It was like wandering the desert and coming upon mirage after mirage. We probably walked about half a mile before realizing the absurdity of our search and heading home.
Several days came and went along with spring snow which I realized would have ruined the poor camera as it sat out in the elements. What a sad fate for the tough little Canon SD800. Two trips to the edge of space and then a snowy demise. Even then, we all held hope that some day several months in the future, a farmer would stumble upon it, give us a call, and we would at least be able to recover the photos on the SD card. What I didn’t expect is that I would get that call on Monday, only five days after losing the package! Our luck had certainly changed for the better, and I immediately drove down to Castle Rock to retrieve the camera package! It turns out that the package landed less than a mile from the last SPOT update and that if we had kept searching in the same direction, we would have probably found it within 30 minutes! On Thursday evening (the day after the flight), a local rancher was out gathering her cows when she came upon it. She brought it inside that night where it sat warm and dry for the next several days as the wet snow blanketed the fields outside, and then she contacted us on Monday. I couldn’t have been more excited when I got the call about it! I literally jumped up and down in my office and hooted and hollered. I exclaimed that it was better than winning the lottery! It didn’t take long to reach Castle Rock where I offered my sincerest thanks to the rancher for her kindness and honesty in getting the package back to me. Once again, the photos from the edge of space were absolutely beautiful with expansive views of the snow capped Rocky Mountains and an amazing overflight of Denver. This payload included more sophisticated instrumentation including a dedicated GPS data logger and a separate Arduino-based logger of GPS information, heading angle, pressure, and ambient temperature. As expected, the EM406 GPS on the Arduino did not function at high altitudes, but the Sparkfun GPS logger kept on working and recorded a new altitude record for us of 106,000 feet above sea level!
Of course, we have lots of terrific photos in this Lucky Balloon photo album and an accompanying KMZ file to view the entire flight with geotagged photos in Google Earth. But the question still remained, why did the SPOT stop sending us position updates? Well, when we opened the package, its LEDs were still blinking in the correct mode, so we know that it was still powered on. We also know that the reentry speed was much higher than the first flight and a hard landing could have possibly caused a glitch. But most importantly (in my opinion), we know that it landed on its side in an open field with a clear view of the sky, and we know that SPOT recommends that it be operated with its antenna facing up and with at least 12 inches separation from any other GPS receivers. So it’s my belief that the combination of radio interference with the other electronics and the poor viewing angle to the sky caused us to sweat it out for five days until our guardian angel delivered the camera back to us. Hopefully, we learned our lesson and won’t need to rely on luck next time!
