The Outside Open team launched a high altitude balloon this past weekend and we were able to get our best photograph from near space yet! The photo, taken at approx 89,000 ft (airplanes fly at just 30,000 ft) is so high that it is above the blue and you can peer into the darkness of space!
We tracked the flight using a Tracksoar APRS tracker designed and produced by our very own Mike Bales. The Tracksoar is the smallest APRS tracker available, measuring just a couple of inches in length. It is powered by an ATMEL ATMEGA 328P running the Arduino bootloader and, best of all, the project is completely open source from circuit design diagrams to the code.
