Grand Canyon Images from Space Lost Then Found.
BARNETT: If you've ever stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon, it inspires wonder. What about seeing it from the edge of space? That's what researchers from Stanford did. But none of us would be able to see this footage here, if it weren't for a woman on a hike. We are going to explain all of that right now. As I am joined from Palo Alto, California, by the Grand Canyon Stratospheric Balloon Team, on the screen, seeing the far right, Ashish Gruell (ph), and Bryan Chan, Tyler Reed (ph), Paul Tarantino, and Vage Terria (ph). Welcome to you all. I want to start with you, Brian. Let's start at the beginning. Why all of this? This was all to study something called fluid lensing. Explain how you all got together and took on this project.</s>BRYAN CHAN, GRAND CANYON STRATOSPHERIC BALLOON TEAM MEMBER: Sure, yeah. Actually, Vage (ph), to my right here was the one with the idea. It really involved having a camera at the edge of space looking down at earth and capturing it. So he knew that myself and a couple others with me here, sort of the alleged balloon experts, we had done stuff with balloons before. He recruited our help. Did the crazy mission to the Grand Canyon. We got amazing footage back.</s>BARNETT: You guys are like super intelligent aerospace engineer students. You say, yeah, we have experience with balloons before. Strikes me as funny.</s>GRAND CANYON STRATOSPHERIC BALLOON TEAM MEMBER: right, because we had to recover the balloon.</s>BARNETT: I want to get to that recovery part. This question is for, Ashish. Your plan was to track the device. Go pro. Smart phones. How did you lose contact with it for two years, even?</s>GRUELL (ph): He had a smart phone. And the idea was that, we had planned our project in such a way that it would land in an area. The smart phone was supposed to have the location. What happened was that well had planned our project using the maps given by the cell phone providers. Turned out the maps are not fully correct. So landed in an area where there was no cell phone coverage. We didn't hear from it for a long time.</s>BARNETT: It's disappointing because we see the footage here, the balloon bursts. The object, the experiment, the data falls to the ground. I'm wondering -- Tyler Reed, maybe you can answer this question. For the last two years, while the footage has been MIA, how will you explain this loss to friend and family wondering what you are really up to? TYLER REED (ph),</s>GRAND CANYON STRATOSPHERIC BALLOON TEAM MEMBER: Well, this is something that we really kind of burned over for a long time. We had some limited data at our disposal to do forensics of what went wrong? You know what did we, what did we not think of? Something overheated and shut down. Maybe the thing just popped early. And then we just never lost track of it. Assumed the worst. Thought that we did something wrong and our system just failed. But we were very, very happy to hear later on that wasn't the case. Something outside of our control that day.</s>BARNETT: Paul, Paul Tarantino, pick up at that point. There was a hiker who found your beloved experiment. How did she get it back to you guys?</s>PAUL TARANTINO, GRAND CANYON STRATOSPHERIC BALLOON TEAM MEMBER: Actually, we sent her -- she started contacting Dave. His original SIM card was in the phone. She went to a local AT&T store and found it was his SIM card, contacted him. We sent her back a prepackaged, prepaid package that would allow her to send it back to us and also a small gift. And, yeah, it was pretty inkred biological to hear back from her.</s>BARNETT: What was the emotion to find your experiment survived?</s>CHAN: When I got the call, I thought it was one of the longest pranks.</s>CHAN: And I had to verify it the first two minutes were verifying that this was an authentic call from our phone. But she described it to a "</s>T." BARNETT: Wow. That's incredible. Maybe, Vage Terria (ph) can answer this one. In the end, you got your data back. We're seeing amazing images, pictures. What did you all learn from this experiment, what should we all take away from it? VAGE TERRIA (ph),</s>GRAND CANYON STRATOSPHERIC BALLOON TEAM MEMBER: So one of the -- essentially a big research product for doctoral work was to get above the atmosphere, one of the cheapest ways to get there was by balloon. In my dissertation, which I will defend earlier next year, I will show data and results. We are trying to image through the earth's atmosphere and use the atmosphere as a lens to magnify on the ground and, one day, resolve centimeter scale from altitude or lower orbit.</s>BARNETT: Very cool stuff. We'll all of this footage to enjoy. The clip you guys posted online, the past few days, viewed more than a million times. I hope you -- wish you much more success and attention. And certainly keep your head in the cloud. Talking via web cam here with the Grand Canyon Stratospheric Balloon Team. Thank you for joining us.</s>BARNETT: Now just a quick final story for you. Lambeau Field in Wisconsin is used to seeing football records set on the field. A different victory set Sunday with a different kind of pigskin. The world's longest bratwurst, 109 meters, or 120 yard long, exact length of the football field. The Johnsonville Sausage Company donated the giant brat for a charity fundraiser to commemorate the start of the NFL season for the Green Bay Packers. Even the kids getting in on the fun. Thank you for watching CNN NEWSROOM, everyone. I'm Errol Barnett. Rosemary Church is up next with the latest news from around the world. I will see you one hour after that. You are watching CNN.