How Incredible Is Your Incredible: Part Three of the SS Sundog Journey

Now that I had a fully functioning, and maybe the first of its kind, weather balloon tracking/photo-taking app, I was ready to send it off. I figured I better clear it with my boss to make sure it was all right to send my phone off into space. I am not sure if he quite believed what I was going to do but he was on board saying something along the lines of “You break it, you bought it.” With that green light, I ordered a 300-gram weather balloon off eBay and a 24” nylon parachute from Amazon.com. I used a piece of left over 1-1/2” Styrofoam insulation, some Plexiglas and zip-ties to build a box to house the phone. I sandwiched the phone in between two pieces of the insulation and cut out a hole for the camera to be able to take pictures. 

Launch day:
I was getting mixed thoughts from others when I told them about my balloon experiment. Most people thought it was a little weird and often asked me why I’d want to do something like this. My dad and brother on the other hand, were more than excited to be part of the experiment. We got together at my house on the morning of the big launch. At first I was worried we wouldn’t have enough helium to get the balloon off the ground with the payload. The helium tank I had was somewhat small and I ended up emptying the whole tank into the balloon. The balloon wasn’t quite filled to its optimal diameter, but it still had enough to lift the payload, which was good.

We hooked up the payload with the phone running the app and made sure it was sending out the SMS messages. It was working properly and all the checks passed so we decided to launch. I released the SS Sundog at about 10:25 a.m. 

The app was working great and we were receiving regular SMS messages with the location of the phone up to about 20,000 ft. where we lost cell signal. At this point the phone was going northwest. About two hours passed and I thought that we should have heard from the phone on its way down by then. I grabbed the Chromebook and forced an update from my phone through Google’s device policy. It popped up… in Remer, MN – 160 miles away. I thought this couldn’t have been right. I forced another update and it was correct. Even Google Latitude said the phone was there. Later we would find out that my app actually was working with the updates as it was falling, but there was a mix up with us seeing the new text messages it was sending though. The phone started sending messages on its way down around 18,000 ft.

It was about a three-hour drive to get to the phone. Once we got there, we realized it was going to be difficult to actually reach the phone because it was in the middle of the Chippewa National Forest about two miles from the closest road.

It was just getting dark as we reached the last stretch of road and then we followed game trails through a marsh. Eventually we reached a dense forest and knew the phone has landed about a half mile into the woods.

My brother was tracking the position with an Asus Transformer, and as soon as we got to where the phone should have been, we stopped and looked up. There it was dangling from the top of a 40’ tree. Once we finally retrieved the phone, we hiked back following the same route. All in all we ended up hiking nearly eight miles through very difficult terrain in the dark. I was glad it was over and I think my brother and dad were as well. We didn’t get home until after 1:00 a.m. the next morning.

So the experiment was a success and I got some very cool pictures. A couple of interesting facts: the phone traveled nearly 130 miles in the just over two hours it was in the air; it reached 60,000’ before the GPS lost signal (consumer restrictions enforced by the government); based on the time it was without GPS signal, I estimate it reached somewhere between 90,000’ and 100,000’; it had a top speed of 161mph (when it had GPS signal).

It still amazes me that this was all achieved with a common, ordinary, smart phone. The experiment proves that HTC phones are well built and Android as an operating system is a stable choice.

Like any good experiment, I plan on launching again but with a few modifications. An altimeter will accompany the payload so I’ll know exactly how high the balloon actually goes. We’ll also be sure to drive to the middle of North Dakota before we launch so the balloon doesn’t get caught in the jet stream and land 160 miles away in the middle of a forest. Here’s hoping for a nice even field for the next landing.

Pictures from the flight
KML file from the flight to view it in Google Earth
SpaceTracker in the Android Market
SpaceTracker open sourced

Read Part One Here
Read Part Two Here