Who needs NASA? Spending less than it costs to take an airplane ride, a handful of industrious Spanish students sent a balloon 100,000 feet into space, tracking it by radio signal via Google Earth.
From 20 miles above the Earth's surface, their handmade spacecraft took compelling photographs of the planet from above which they recovered when they found the landed balloon just over five miles from where they launched it.The pupils' incredible school science project has already caught the attention of the University of Wyoming in the US, and the Meteotek team keep those interested updated with regular blogs and updates to their Twitter feed.
link
Randy
http://www.eoss.org/ansrecap/ar_131/recap135.htm
for example. And yes, you do need to get FAA approval and let them know when you launch.
However it does look like there are precedents.
http://www.natrium42.com/halo/flight2/
that site is pretty interesting too. I think perhaps the cost involved here is probably the major improvement, but I'm guessing they probably just had to cross their fingers and hope the camera took some god shots.
http://teslabs.com/meteotek08/
"At over 100,000ft the balloon lost its inflation and the equipment was returned to the earth."
Now there's a euphemism!
It looks much more complicated than reading the blog entry. Those guys did a pretty good tech job.
If someone hasn't found it yet.