U . S . students snap space photos for mere $ 160 Last Updated : Tuesday , September 15 , 2009 | 2 : 02 PM ET Comments 26 Recommend 76 CBC News MIT students captured this photograph of the Earth from 28 kilometres up using consumer electronics . ( Justin Lee & Oliver Yeh / 1337 arts . com ) Students at MIT have taken pictures from the upper stratosphere showing the curvature of the Earth under a black sky using off - the - shelf electronics that cost them about $ 160 . The three students behind the initiative , dubbed Project Icarus , used a weather balloon and a point - and - shoot camera to capture the images of Earth and a GPS - capable pre - paid cellphone to track the balloon . The students — Oliver Yeh , Justin Lee and Eric Newton — estimate the balloon reached an altitude of more than 28 kilometres , or 93 , 000 feet , more than twice as high as commercial jets fly . The group , which specializes in low - cost aerial photography that it displays and sells through a website called 1337 arts , says others have sent out similar balloons but never using unmodified consumer electronics or on such a low budget . The camera used in the project was a 7 . 1 - megapixel Canon Powershot the students bought used on Amazon . com . They installed an open - source firmware add - on to the camera that would allow them to program it to take a picture every five seconds . To track the location of the balloon , they used a $ 50 pre - paid Motorola cellphone with GPS capabilities and installed a free program that would report the phone ' s location at regular intervals . A USB phone charger powered by AA lithium batteries kept the phone running during the five - hour voyage . They also installed an external antenna to boost the phone ' s signal . Even with the antenna , the phone lost reception at an altitude of less than a kilometre , and a software limitation prevented the flight log from recording altitudes more than six kilometres . The students estimated the altitude their balloon reached by extrapolating the data that was recorded and by using tracking information from similar balloons . They kept all the electronics running in the cold of the stratosphere by packing all the gadgets into a Styrofoam beer cooler and adding an instant hand - warming pouch . A parachute slowed the cooler ' s descent to Earth after the balloon burst in the thin atmosphere . The students launched the balloon from a field in Sturbridge , Mass . , on Sept . 2 and recovered it five hours later at a construction site in Worcester , about 32 kilometres away . All the equipment was still functional after the landing , but the antenna was embedded into the ground , so it couldn ' t broadcast its location . " We were lucky that the Motorola i 290 managed to send out its GPS location before landing , " the students wrote on 1337 arts . com . " We were also lucky that the capsule landed in a soft - earthed construction field with a clear view of the sky . Retrieval would definitely have been a much more difficult process had our device landed in a lake or in the forest . " The 1337 arts website says the group is " dedicated to celebrating the marriage of art and science and promoting the beauty of scientific art . " A group of Spanish high school students captured similar images in February using a consumer camera , but they used custom - built electronics for tracking the balloon , at an estimated total cost of $ 1 , 590 . Lee said he hoped the simplicity and low cost of their project would inspire arts and science students in high schools to attempt their own high - altitude photography .