Here's one space launch this summer that did go off without a hitch.

This is the moment a UK dad of two launched a teddy bear 30km into space on a weather balloon as part of an ambitious DIY project to inspire his children “to dream big.”

Clever Chris Tarpy, 50, launched the helium balloon complete with a teddy bear, parachute, tracking device and computer system to record flight data, from a park in Bedford last month with kids Luke, 12, and Maya, 10, by his side.

Spectacular video shows the countdown to "blast off" and then the teddy bear’s remarkable journey into space.

"The point of the project was to inspire kids and encourage them to dream big," says Tarpy, a Barnet-based company founder working in fintech who specialises in software engineering. "To show that seemingly impossible things become possible with creativity and hard work."

Tarpy chose a teddy bear as the "pilot" to make the project more relatable. It also added to the adventure when chasing 40-plus miles across the country to recover the teddy and the flight module.

Tarpy explains: “The basic flight principle is to use a helium-filled balloon that will produce enough lift to carry its own weight (800 grams in this case) - plus the weight of the payload (flight module plus teddy plus parachute). 

“As the balloon altitude increases and you get closer to space, the atmospheric pressure decreases. Without this pressure balancing the outward force of the helium, the balloon starts to expand - until it eventually pops. 

“To give you an idea of the sizes - on the ground, the balloon I used (a Kaymont 800) was around 2.85 cubic meters, with a diameter of 1.75 meters across.

“At burst point (30km up), the balloon was a massive 254 cubic meters, with a diameter of 7.86 meters.”

“So the idea is that at 30km up the balloon bursts. 

“To slow the descent to Earth I attached a small parachute to the bridle (the arrangement of string attaching the flight module to the balloon), which stopped the module from being smashed to bits.

“To keep the weight down and insulate the electronics, the flight module casing was built from plastic foam. This had the advantage of having good thermal insulation. It gets really really cold as you head toward space (down to -50 degrees Celsius). At that temperature you start to have issues with batteries not working, so keeping the internal temperature up is necessary to keep the electronics happy.

“To keep it rigid and allow me to attach the teddy far enough away from the camera to get a good picture of the Earth and space in the background, I used two lengths of bamboo going right through the foam casing and out to the foam seat. Then to attach the teddy, I used two cable ties - one round each leg, going through the foam and round the bamboo. Because of the bamboo, I could tighten the ties without fear of damaging the foam seat.”

Safety was of paramount concern. Since Tarpy was sending a large object potentially into the path of planes, he was required to get permission from the UK Civil Aviation Authority.

“They actually have a form specifically for high-altitude balloons,” Tarpy says. “You need to give them lots of details about the flight - launch date, payload mass, ascent rate, descent rate, burst altitude - and it needs to be done 30 days in advance. Then they issue a NOTAM (notice to aviation) to all the local air traffic control towers. You also have to be contactable, to allow them the opportunity to cancel your launch if necessary.”

The bear's journey back down to Earth by parachute was not caught on camera because turbulence dislodged the power connector into the camera. "I wasn’t expecting it to be such a bumpy ride," Tarpy jokes.

However, Tarpy and his kids were able to retrieve it - 40km from the launch site in Bedford, because of a tracking device he’d installed.

“I used a commercial GPS tracker (Spot Trace), mainly because I was worried that if the module came down in an area with no network coverage I’d not be able to recover it. Also, one of our clients - Ring Automotive - make dashcams - so we used one of their dashcams as our camera.” Tarpy put a Ring t-shirt on the teddy bear as a thank you.

“Since we had real-time tracking information, me and the kids spent the next couple of hours chasing it over its 40-mile journey from Bedford to a small village - Littlebury, Essex - just to the east of the M11 motorway. Eventually we found it by the side of a road going through the village, fully intact, complete with electronics and SD card full of video!”

Tarpy says the bold experiment has changed the perception of his children Luke and Maya to science and maths.

“The kids loved it. Sending stuff to space is usually the preserve of outfits like NASA or sci-fi TV. So to make something that is seemingly impossible become reality was magical for them. They were also exposed to the scope of technological know-how that’s needed in the real world. The biggest success was a change in viewpoint on maths. Their perception on maths had not been positive, because they’d not seen the use of it.

“But now they’ve seen it's actually the best tool you have for making stuff happen. For example: we know we need the balloon’s volume to be 2.85 meters on the ground. That’s impossible to measure directly. But if we could work out the circumference of the sphere given that volume, well then we could measure out a piece of string that length beforehand. Then, as I’m filling up the balloon from the helium cylinder, the kids are testing the circumference of the balloon with their pre-measure string so we know when the correct volume has been reached.”

The point of the project was to inspire kids and encourage them to dream big. To show that seemingly impossible things become possible with creativity and hard work.

Choosing a teddy as the 'pilot' was about making it relatable - and also added to the adventure when chasing 50+ miles across the country to recover teddy and the flight module.