So, if you were looking for cost effective "off the shelve" components to create a balloon that would follow the spaceship Discovery to the edge of space on its last mission what are some of the parts would you use? According to the folks from Quest for Stars you would use a couple of Droid X's loaded up with some Seidio 2600mAh extended batteries for GPS tracking and photo taking purposes.
That's exactly what they used to take the photo above and to track their balloon and payload. What you see in the above pic is space shuttle Discovery's vapor trail as it was captured from an altitude above 70,000 feet. This of course is not the only time an Android powered device has been used in or near space. Quest for Stars used an OG Droid on their last mission and not so long ago Google engineers fired off their own Nexus S equipped balloons into the atmosphere. If you want to hear some praise about why the Droid X was used, you can hit the video after the break. [Space]
