Earth from the stratosphere (Photo: Brooklyn Space Program)
Apple advises people to keep their iPhones away from extreme temperatures (“You should store it in environments of -4° to 113° F,” according to the company’s page on iPhone battery life). But a father and son from New York exposed their iPhone to 60-below temperatures when they sent it into the stratosphere as part of an experiment for the Brooklyn Space Program. The experiment sent a video camera — apparently not the one in the iPhone — up to record a dizzying view of the earth that appears in this video.
When the payload got high enough, the weather balloons it was attached to exploded, and a parachute was deployed. That’s when the (insulated) iPhone came into play. The phone’s GPS signal allowed the pair to track and retrieve the payload — which landed, intact, about 30 miles from the spot on the Hudson River where it had been launched.
Karen Anderson