HTC Trophy Launches… Into The Outer Atmosphere

In a pretty cool experiment,  a team from Southampton University sent an HTC Trophy smart-phone into the stratosphere in a balloon for atmospheric research. With some help with Microsoft they were able to build an app to help them with their project. Also, Using GPS and Bing maps they were also able to determine the landing site.

‘The flight was part of the university’s Astra project– Atmospheric Science Through Robotic Aircraft. “We want to explore the outer atmosphere using low-cost high-altitude unmanned aircraft,” said research fellow Andras Sobester.

“We are collecting data which will then plug in to various atmospheric science projects, monitoring pollutants such as volcanic ash for example, and informing the science behind modelling the climate and earth system in general.”

Friday’s flight was a test run to see if the handset was up to the task – it passed with flying colours – while testing the technology out. The positioning data was sent to a Windows Azure server, which did the number-crunching work to calculate its course. The software and app was the work of developer Segoz, working with the university team’

Source: Guardian.co.uk via MSFTNext Twitter