The Grand Canyon from the Stratosphere

This is a really cool view of the Grand Canyon from the edge of outer space, but the story that goes with the video is pretty interesting, as well.

From Fox News:

It took five friends a couple months of planning to record the perfect GoPro shot. It took two years to get the footage back.

Members of the group recounted the amazing journey that took a GoPro camera from the terrain of Tuba City, Ariz., to the edge of space and back in posts on YouTube and Reddit. The June 2013 expedition was designed to capture breathtaking aerial views of the Grand Canyon and its surrounding area via a GoPro camera and Galaxy Note II launched on a weather balloon.

After reaching a maximum altitude of about 18 miles, during a flight time of slightly more than 90 minutes, the payload fell to the desert floor – where it remained for about two years. The team was using the GPS on the smartphone to track the package, but they encountered a problem during the descent. 

Yeah, the problem was they had no idea at all where the thing landed...

The phone landed about 50 miles from the original launch point, nestled in an anonymous patch of sand.

“TWO YEARS LATER, in a twist of ironic fate, a woman who works at AT&T was on a hike one day and spotted our phone in the barren desert,” trexarmsss wrote. “She brings it to an AT&T store, and they identify my friend’s SIM card. We got the footage and data a few weeks later!”