World Domination and Beyond: Google Sends New Phones to Space

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Robert Galbraith / Reuters

Because Google has pretty much already dominated Earth, they’ve decided to move on up. Way up. 

A group of Google engineers and students from the University of California, Santa Cruz got together and sent a batch of Google Nexus S phones into the atmosphere using helium-filled balloons.

(More on TIME.com: See the father-son team that sent an iPhone into space)

Packed up tight–together with GPS and video cameras–in coolers, the phones were released into space as engineers hoped to assess how well the phones would cope in a freezing near-vacuum environment.

The balloons popped when they reached an altitude of approximately 30,000 meters (around 90,000 feet) and the coolers fell back to Earth, slowed due to small parachutes that were attached.

(More on TIME.com: See pictures of animals in space)

A couple of days after the launch, all but one of the coolers had been retrieved and all of the phones were working. So it seems like Google actually is ready for space. (via NewScientist)