Lost at Sea

Cool story of a School Science Project gone horribly wrong and then an amazing recovery. CNet NEWS.COM has the story:

Lost at sea, found in flash
A high-flying, student-assembled research balloon that appeared doomed after crashing into the Pacific Ocean has ended up yielding valuable astronomical data, thanks to hardy memory cards that survived the plunge.

As a result, astronomers now have information that will help them focus more clearly on galaxies, planets, stars, comets and other objects in space. And the California engineering students who first set the balloon afloat have been awarded special university honors for their efforts--and seen how a seemingly sunken venture can end up an unexpected treasure trove.

The balloon, set aloft by students at the University of California at Santa Cruz to measure atmospheric turbulence, plunged into the ocean and was assumed lost after it broke apart in flight.

"It was a sad feeling, thinking that we weren't going to see (the balloon) again," said Skye Vendt-Pearce, the 23-year-old leader of the student team. "It was, 'Oh, we have nothing to show for our four or five months of work.' It was like saying goodbye to a friend."

But the Fates were smiling that day:

But five days after the balloon disappeared, a beachgoer found the apparatus washed ashore about 20 miles north of where it had dropped into the ocean, and called the university. When the students arrived, they saw that a small padded lunch bag containing the circuit board for the telemetry equipment and a SanDisk 1GB standard SD memory card had been thoroughly soaked by saltwater. Nearby were the shattered remains of the Aiptek PenCam SD digital camera, which had been separated from the bag. The camera's memory card, a SanDisk 128MB standard SD card that generally sells for about $20, was among the rubble.

Back at UC Santa Cruz, students dried out the camera card using alcohol, slipped it into a PC card reader and saw a string of high-elevation photos, some taken at heights of up to 79,000 feet. The images showed various representations of the craggy coast, wave crests, rip currents and even the Watsonville, Calif., airport. The camera had snapped pictures every 10 seconds, Vesecky said, and not a single image was lost.

They were not able to read the other Flash memory but they sent it to SanDisk who was able to use some hardware tools to extract all the data. Very cool finish to an awesome project... Here is one of the pictures: SanDisk does good stuff -- I have several digital cameras and use their products exclusively. I have tried other brands but had problems.