3D Robotics

Paper plane captures images of space

"Three British amateur aerospace enthusiasts have successfully sent a camera-equipped paper airplane to an altitude of 89,000 feet (27,127 meters), where it captured images of the blackness of space before gliding back to Earth. Project PARIS (Paper Aircraft Released Into Space) involved getting the plane into the stratosphere using a weather balloon before letting it go via a release mechanism. " Read more at Gizmomag.


Not a UAV, per se, just a free-flight plane with a GPS tracker. But so cool!

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  • High Altitude Glider Project (see link above) did fly back fly autonomously by GPS / airspeed exc.. At that time (around 2000) a GPS / PC104 computer exc.. Where quite a bit bigger than now. Some fine engineering went into the project.

    Is an fun bit of reading if nothing else.
  • Moderator
    Deep deep sigh, things keep being re discovered here at an alarming rate http://www.gpsboomerang.com/
  • so go out on a boat into international waters and deploy it lol.....

    OK i have to ask, i've seen this FAR TO MANY TIMES, last time it was just a dead drop of the camera with a parachute, now a glider, why hasn't anyone instead of a dumb glider, have a GPS enabled UAV attached that activates when the altimiter starts to fall, so as soon as ascent stops and decent begins, UAV function activates, and it starts a return GPS path by flying to the first predesignated gps coordinate and then back home.... seems like it shouldnt be that hard what you think?
  • Thats not cool. Guess you will have to cut and paste.
    http://www.members.shaw.ca/sonde/index.htm
    Shaw Communications
  • Hum something happened to the link??
    Trying again
  • This guy did a similar one years back.

    Was not supposed to be in the US (only Canada) but its strayed south once.

    Both are cool projects.
    Shaw Communications
  • Too bad you can't do this in the USA, you can drop a brick back to earth on a parachute but a "glider" requires approval.
  • Similar to what Nathan Seidle mentioned in his speech at Google. Except instead of dropping the camera, it releases a plane. Brilliant I say
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