blow up a helium balloon, attach an aeroplane made of paper, find a lightweight pilot, and send it up to the edge of space. somewhere over spain, let the helium balloon pop and see what the camera captures as it glides back down to earth. the results are astonishing. the curvature of the earth, normally seen from rockets and shuttles, now shot from a paper aeroplane at 80,000 feet. the three brits behind the program are not scientists, and the footage exceeded all their expectations. >> we were amazed. we had cameras. it's minus 60 degrees up there but we thought the batteries were back up after 40 minutes or an hour. in fact they lasted an hour and a half. >> reporter: once the plane came back to earth the question was how were they going to find it? the team designed this special tracker device, devised not at nasa headquarters but in this