Teen floats 30 pounds camera into space to capture amazing images of Earth

London, September 10 (ANI): A teenager has managed to capture incredible images of the earth from space using a 30-pound camera he bought on eBay.

To do so Adam Cudworth, from Ombersley, Worcs, floated his second hand camera into space.

And while NASA spends hundreds of millions of pounds each year on high tech satellites Adam, whose scientific background consists of only a Physics A-Level, achieved his incredible feat - on a 200-pound budget, the Telegraph reported.

The student spent 40 hours working on a home-made device consisting of a box containing a GPS, radio and microprocessor - which soared to an incredible height of 110,210 ft (33,592m) when he released it last Thursday.

After taking two-and-a-half hours to float over 20 miles up into the earth's stratosphere, his contraption captured out-of-this-world images giving breathtaking views of our planet from space.

Adam used a GPS tracker similar to a car's sat-nav to follow its progress and an attached radio transmitter to find it when it fell back to earth having reached speeds of over 150mph.

"It's just a bit of hobby really, I just wanted to set myself a challenge - but I'm amazed at the results," the paper quoted the 19-year-old boy Nottingham University student as saying.

"I saw a guy who did a similar thing a couple of years back and I just wanted to recreate them - but better.

"I have no background in astrophysics or anything like that, I'm just an engineering student," he said.

Adam bought a standard Canon A570 camera off eBay a year-and-a-half ago when he first had the idea for the project.

He placed it in an insulated box along with a small video camera, two temperature sensors, two high-performance solar panels, a tracking device, microprocessor and radio.

He then attached it to a high-altitude two metre latex balloon with a parachute - and named his contraption HABE 5.

Following the launch, Adam tracked the balloon as it climbed to three times the height of a commercial plane before it burst and landed in Broadway, Worcs., 30 miles from his home.

The built-in circuit board allowed for Adam to cleverly record the speed, G-force and altitude his balloon was reaching at all times.

And incredible video footage taken alongside the photos, shows HABE 5 swirling through the clouds to dizzying heights. (ANI)