A recent story I read brought a smile to my face and reassured me that the spirit of adventure and ingenuity is still alive and strong.

Robert Harrison, from the UK put his imagination into gear and came up with a device costing around £500 that managed to do what NASA had spent millions doing - that is, to take stunning photographs of planet Earth.

The device, comprising of a digital camera and GPS system, all held together with lots of duct tape and suspended under a weather balloon took flight reaching 35km in height and captured a series of impressive photographs of Earth, from the edge of Space.

Once published online, Mr Harrison was soon contacted by someone from NASA wanting to know how he managed to do it without a rocket and large pile of money!

It just goes to show that sometimes the best solutions to a problem can indeed be the simplest.

Well done Robert Harrison, and to all the budding inventors out there in the world, keep going, keep the imagination active, and don't forget that sometimes sticking to the basics can take you sky high!

To see more pictures you can go to Mr Harrison's flickr site by clicking the link below;
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30721501@N05/collections/72157621244472915/