Engineers along with a number of students have attached Nexus S smartphones to balloons and lifted the smartphones in to space.
The team uses seven Styrofoam beer coolers with a side cut out and replaced with plastic. A Nexus S smartphone was attached to the plastic side with the camera facing out to film what was happening.
Several apps were left running on each phone with each one testing each of the sensors. An app measured the accelerometer changes while another tracked GPS and another used the Gyroscope to see what happened as the smartphone(s) were lifted in to space. Another part of the test was to see how the sensors work in very cold conditions.
A GPS transponder was attached to each casing allowing the Google team to track down the phones as they land which is sometimes up to 200 miles away when taking winds in to consideration.
Most of the seven balloons managed to get past 32,000 meters from the ground and it took about 20 to 30 minutes for the phones to land back on the ground.
The tests were mainly just for fun although the company is in talks with a UK company about the potential of launching some of the Nexus S technology in to space on a Satellite as it’s powerful enough for commodity satellites.
Video below…
Via: NewScientist
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