Recovered GoPro Shows Amazing Footage of Grand Canyon From Space

Brittany Jones-Cooper
·Reporter
Updated

If something gets lost in the desert, it’s usually lost forever.

But two years after losing a GoPro in a science experiment over Arizona, four students were reunited with the amazing footage showing the Grand Canyon from space.

In June 2013, after months of preparation (including drop testing and trajectory planning), the foursome released a helium balloon into the atmosphere. They attached a GoPro camera in a 3D printed chassis to capture the images below.

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The Grand Canyon captured from nearly 100,000 feet up! (Photo: Bryan Chan/Youtube)

To ensure the camera’s recovery, the students also attached a GPS-enabled smartphone to continuously log the balloon’s location on its memory card. They used an app to have the phone text its GPS location once it was returning to earth.

Related: WATCH: A Blind Adventurer Launches An Epic 21-Day Kayak Trip Through the Grand Canyon

What the budding scientists couldn’t plan for was the fact that the phone never sent the signal, because the AT&T coverage map they were referencing was inaccurate. So without a signal, the students were unable to locate the phone.

They had given up on ever recovering the GoPro, until a chance encounter in the desert led them back to the camera.

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Even from these heights, it’s still pretty grand. (Photo: Bryan Chan/Youtube)

“In a twist of ironic fate, a woman who works at AT&T was on a hike one day and spotted our phone in the barren desert,” Bryan Chan wrote on Reddit. “She brings it to an AT&T store, and they identify my friend’s SIM card. We got the footage and data a few weeks later!”

Once the students logged the data, they were able to see that the balloon ride lasted 1 hour and 38 minutes, and traveled an impressive 98,664 feet into the air before the balloon popped and plummeted back to earth.

But the real surprise was the the breathtaking footage of the Grand Canyon captured from the stratosphere. From those heights, the 277-mile long natural wonder looks like a tiny little pen scribble.

If these students are still in school, we think they definitely deserve an A!

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