Two Pre-Teens Send Homemade Ship to the Edge of Space

I can’t remember what I was doing last Saturday, but it doesn’t matter, because it definitely wasn’t as exciting as what 8-year-old Kimberly and 10-year-old Rebecca Yeung cooked up.

These cool, tech-savvy sisters built a handmade spacecraft from wooden triangles and broken arrow shafts, attached a picture of their cat Loki and a LEGO R2-D2 figurine, and launched the whole thing into space with a helium-filled weather balloon, two GoPro cameras, and a tracking device to record results.

Oh, and it rose perfectly to 78,000 feet (that’s twice as high as a commercial aircraft!) and reached speeds of 100km/hr. Smarties, are your eyes popping out of your head yet?!

Here’s the projected flight path of the craft (on top), and the actual path it took (on bottom), which is further than estimated:

The part that really impresses me is how the girls followed through with their project — they didn’t just launch an impressive contraption into space, hoping it soared to great heights, and call it a day. They used the proper method to track their device, as Kimberly mentioned in an interview with GeekWire. “The tall grass hid the spacecraft so well, that we even walked right past it. But thanks to the GPS we were able to find it.” It might seem simple, but their results came down to strong, careful planning in those critical early stages.

So, what did the girls learn at the end? Here’s a page out of their project folder. I’m quite temped to print it out and stick it on the wall in my house, because these are very useful life tips:

Do you have a story to share, like these girls? Don’t be shy, we’re all friends here. Tell us in the comments below!

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HT: GeekWire
Image Credit: YouTube