Today shall be deemed Mozilla Day.

Update: Write-up from the OSLUG Website

Weather Balloon

Last Saturday at a Kveton BBQ Polvi, Marineau, Kveton and I were trying to come up with an idea to celebrate the 100 Millionth download of Mozilla Firefox.

At 50 Million we painted a Firefox logo mural in the middle of the MU quad which got a ton of attention. This time we wanted to do something even bigger so after several suggestions like paper mache logos and beachballs.

Then I remembered the NASA Oregon Space Grant Consurtium and LaunchOregon weather balloon program. Perfect!

So after a few minutes of thinking through the logistics it was a done deal.

On Monday I went to the Space Grant and talked to Catherine Lanier at the OSGC and she was pumped! w00t. The weather balloon was a go.

By Friday Northwest Graphic Imaging had donated a 5′x6′ poster that would fly on the balloon, press was covered and we found out perspective students would be hitting the quad at 12:00pm for launch due to the Beaver Open House.

The event went off smoothly today and we had a ton of people and coverage in the quad. It was a great collaboration of OSLUG, NASA Oregon Space Grant Consurtium, Mozilla, and NW Graphic Imaging. Thanks guys!

Around 3:00pm the satellite should have landed back on Earth from a descent of 100,000 feet. The satellite carried two cameras, one pointing down and another pointing at the poster both were on a 3 minute delay. And when we recover the balloon there will be amazing shots of the horizon and the Firefox logo.