Two graduate students from Memorial University are elated after successfully sending what they said is the first weather balloon to travel from Newfoundland and Labrador to the edge of space and and back.

"The reason why people don't launch weather balloons in Newfoundland and try to retrieve [them] is because there's a huge likelihood that the weather balloons could actually land in the sea," said grad student John Hennessey.

But that didn't deter Hennessey and his fellow grad student Amarnath Mukhopadhyay.

They built and launched the balloon, and then tracked it as it rose to 120,000 feet. The balloon then burst and plumetted back down to Millertown Junction.

"I was holding my breath when I was taking the SD card out of the GoPro camera and shoved it into my laptop," Hennessey said.

"Then finally, I saw the curve of the earth and the atmosphere [that] was below the camera, and I knew it had worked."