To Infinity and Beyond: Nexus One Rockets to 28,000 Feet

by Kevin Krause on July 29th, 2010 at 2:10 pm

nexus-one-rocket

OK, yesterday when I posted a strange Nexus One/ Wiimote/Handlebar mount mashup I questioned just how far people might push their Android phones, and it turns out at least a few are looking to outer space as the final frontier for the little green robot. While converting an N1 into a make-shift Gameboy showed some ambition, it is easily trumped by a group known as the Maverick Civilian Space Foundation who turned to the handset as a proof of concept as to how using off-the-shelf products and components can drive down the cost of today’s enormous and expensive satellites.

The test flight was to see just how the Nexus One would handle extremes such as high G-forces, massive vibrations, and temperature extremes. An early attempt brought back a busted Nexus, but the second phone launched provided the following footage of its journey into the upper realms of the earth’s atmosphere. Pretty damn cool if I do say so myself.

[via Wired]

  • swehes

    that is cool. however I wished the camera would have been in a way coming down to see the view of the ground.

  • Alex

    awesomeness

  • bobbert

    my ears popped when i watched this

  • thelonewizard

    @bobbert: rofl.

  • http://www.daverea.com/ dave

    Wonder if they used Latitude to locate the rocket after touchdown??

  • Pedro

    10min of free fall? It was on a parachute! That’s not free fall.

    Otherwise, cool!

  • http://music.kwaping.com Kwaping

    I give the landing a 10!

  • jdog

    To infinity and beyond.

  • going_home

    Oh my, seasick I am.
    What was the point of this anyways ?

    :?

  • Zach

    @going_home to test if the phone could survive the forces put on it under these extremes and i’m sure a few other experiments.

    That was so cool… i’ve got an old palm pre… wonder if it’d survive something cool like this. :):)

  • Michele

    I will try to push a cow with an android device on the neck in the atmosphere…

  • DrDiff

    I was Tripoli High Power L2 Certified. Good to see some Android hardware being used. Too bad they did not do dual Deployment. Could have saved 10 minutes of drifting under parachute.



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