A Calgary family gathered to celebrate the nation’s birth in a very special way over the weekend, using a balloon to send a trio of cameras into the sky to take some amazing footage from just above the atmosphere.

Don Hladiuk, an experienced astronomer and rocketeer, said that his family wanted to do something unique to celebrate the nation’s birthday.

“What’s more unique than sending an emblem of Canada 150 up into the stratosphere and looking down at our beautiful planet? Canada is such a beautiful country.”

He says his family gathered in a field east of Calgary on Saturday and sent a helium-filled balloon, loaded with three high definition cameras up into the air.

The balloon also carried a Geiger counter, temperature sensor, pressure gauge, GPS tracker and a number of personal mementos the family wanted to send to the edge of space and back.

The cameras recorded a stunning view of Southern Alberta, rising to an altitude of 28,000 metres in about an hour and a half before the balloon burst and the cameras fell back to Earth.

Hladiuk said a parachute helped slow the payload down enough so it could land safely.

“We’re lucky it didn’t hit a building or a concrete road. It landed in a nice, soft, farmer’s field. So I think Styrofoam should be given more credit; it’s pretty sturdy.”

Once the cameras were retrieved, Hladiuk said that the images they captured were amazing.

“It was so beautiful to see Southern Alberta; you could see Dead Horse Lake, you could see the Red Deer River valley. It was a clear day; you could see the snow-covered mountains off to the south. The sun was just glinting so bright in the blackness of space. We were above most of the atmosphere; you could see this blue band on the horizon which is just our thin atmosphere. It really drove home how thin our life-preserving atmosphere really is.”

He also said they gathered a lot of scientific data too, including extremely high radiation levels.

Hladiuk said two individuals helped them track the device throughout its whole trip.

“I have to thank Brian Jackson and Nicholas Janzen because they have a radio transmitter box that provided live data from the time we let it go to the time it landed and this will really help our science because from 30,000 feet and back down, we wouldn’t really know where it was, what altitude it was at, so having all this other data we can now correlate the pressure, temperature and radiation levels with a location and an altitude; very important for good science.”

While Hladiuk has done this sort of thing before, he says that anyone can purchase and launch a helium-filled weather balloon.

Plans and kits can be found online and cost approximately $100 aside from the cost of the equipment that you send up.

You will need to get permission from Transport Canada before you send the balloon up so the agency can warn aircraft in the area and you’ll also need to follow strict weight guidelines.

(With files from Kevin Green)