from KJ4RSG..

Although the first effort by a group of Beaufort High School students to take photographs of space was unsuccessful, teacher Todd Stowe said he looks forward to trying again.

"You learn a lot by failure," Stowe said. "It's like what Thomas Edison said. He had to go through a couple of hundred different materials before he found something that would burn inside of a light bulb but not burn up."

Stowe and students from his digital photography class traveled to an airport in Macon, Ga., on Tuesday to launch a digital camera about 110,000 feet in the air to take photographs of the earth's curvature.

The camera was launched successfully, but the students were unable to recover it.The point-and-shoot camera was packaged in a Styrofoam capsule with two tracking devices -- a ham radio transmitter and a satellite GPS unit -- and hand warmers to keep the electronics warm and operating.

The capsule was attached to a parachute, and the parachute was attached to a weather balloon filled with helium.

Stowe expected the balloon to raise the capsule until it reached an altitude of about 110,000 feet and then burst. That would allow the parachute to fill with air and the capsule to float back down to earth. He had hoped the radio transmitter and GPS satellite would keep the class informed of the camera's location.

Before the capsule was launched, Stowe said he was able to pick up signals from the tracking devices and follow them on a laptop computer.

However, the radio signal was lost shortly after the launch. Neither Stowe nor members of Beaufort Radio Amateur Group, who helped the class, know why.

"It was working on the ground," said Paul Grayce, a member of the Beaufort Radio Amateur Group. "We're trying to figure out what went wrong and why. It really shouldn't have gotten lost."

The satellite unit stopped regularly transmitting a signal sometime in mid-flight.

A recovery team went to the spot of the last signal, a dirt road near Walterboro, to see if the capsule had landed, Stowe said.

Nothing was there.

The fate of the capsule is a mystery, Stowe said.

"Somebody could have ran over it," he said. "Or someone could have seen it come down and said 'Hey, free camera.' Or, it might have ended up in the Atlantic. ... Not knowing is the absolute worst part."

Stowe said he and his students plan to discuss ways to improve the project, raise money to buy new equipment and try again this spring.

Stowe is collecting donations to help with future launches and can be reached at Beaufort High School, 843-322-2000.