Months-long preparations of five Stanford University students to capture images of the Grand Canyon from the edge of space have failed. A hiker has found their cameras in the desert two years later.

The team has launched a weather balloon to carry out the project. It was carrying two cameras and a smartphone and launched in June 2013 over the desert just north of Tuba City in Arizona. Using a smartphone app, the students intended to retrieve the cameras and phone.

But they could not establish contact from the phone and their plans failed. One of the team-members, Bryan Chan, was of the view that the phone did not send any signal because it returned to earth. It landed around 80 km from the launch site in an area, where it should be having the coverage.

Chan said, “We were all moping around, making bets on when, if ever, it would be found for a while when, just a couple months ago, a woman contacts us about finding a weird box with our name on it”.

After two years, a woman who works with AT&T was on a hike and noticed our phone in the desert. She brought the phone to an AT&T store and identified one of the team-member’s SIM card. They were able to receive the footage and data.

As per the footage, the weather balloon reached at an altitude of around 30 km in just one-and-a-half hour. The equipments including a GoPro HERO3, a Sony Camcorder and a Samsung Galaxy Note II phone did not suffer any damage.