It was no Hubble at all: The stunning images from space taken by two students on a 350 budget

Add to My Stories You could be forgiven for thinking these amazing shots of the curvature of the earth were produced by a hi-tech Nasa telescope or an expensive special effects company.But they were actually produced by a 45 High Definition camera stuck into a styrofoam box with gaffa tape and floated 23 miles into the atmosphere on a helium balloon.
PHD students Alex Baker and Chris Rose drove 100 miles from Ashbourne in Derbyshire to recover the images after their rudimentary craft splashed down in a field in Cambridgeshire.

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Spacemen: Sheffield University students Chris Rose and Alex Baker used a home made device to capture the stunning images of the earthBaker, 26, and Rose, 25, spent two months planning their experiment and building their space exploration vessel after hitting on the idea last October.
The close friends, both students in mechanical engineering at the University of Sheffield, wanted to complete their mini-space exploration as cheaply as possible to inspire others to follow suit.They home-made kit was capable of recording images from over 100,000 feet in the sky by inserting the HD video camera into a styrofoam box along with a GPS device so they could find their equipment once it had landed.
They then inserted hand warmers inside the box to keep the gear as warm as possible in the -50 degree temperatures high above the earth, gaffa taped up the box, attached a parachute for a safe descent.

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Thrifty: The friends stuck to a self-imposed budget of 350 'We could have spent more on it but we decided to try and do it as cheap as possible to encourage other people and show them that it could be done easily and cheaply,' said Rose.
'I really hope other people follow in ou! r footst eps because anyone can do it.'
The two space fanatics launched their device in Derbyshire in December and tracked its progress on a GPS device which responded to a phone call by texting back its coordinates.
After a flight time of just under three hours, the majority of which was captured on video, they received a message telling them that their craft had landed over 100 miles away in the village of Strethall in Cambridgeshire.
'When we got the coordinates we raced down to where it was but it just took us to the nearest road junction, so we were driving around this massive field and realised it must be in there somewhere,' said Rose.
'The field was about 18 acres but we had no idea where it was in there.

Fetch: The pair drove more than 100 miles to retrieve their craft after it crash landed in Cambridgeshire'We scoured it military style for about three and a half hours until it began to get dark and it just as we were giving up and walking back to the car that we found it.
'We had no idea what to expect because we didn't know how long the battery would last or if it would have saved the video so we just had a flick through in the car.
'We were so relieved when we realised we had hours of footage on there. We loaded it on to the laptop and had a look through and the results were brilliant.
'We were really happy with what we saw and it was hugely satisfying to look at it and think "I took that".
'I've got actually got a print blown up of one of the stills and put it on my wall as a reminder of what we achieved.'We're already thinking about doing another one with some more expensive equipment to see what sort of results we could get when we really go for it.
'We might have to leave it a while though and actually do some work on our PHDs so we don't give our supervisor too many grey hairs.'