The Massachusetts Institute of Technology or MIT added yet another feather in its cap after winning $40,000 in a nationwide balloon hunt, that involved locating ten balloons scattered all across the United States with the means of high-tech technology. The contest was organized by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), whose primary responsibility is to locate, discover and develop new technology that can have practical applications in the military.

Researchers and participants from one of the most prestigious scientific institutions in the world won the balloon location contests after it successfully provided the latitude and longitude coordinates of all ten balloons. The whole point of this innovative activity was to determine the usability of social networking, crowd sourcing and other technologies when it comes to the effective completion of time-critical projects.

DARPA has stated that, the contest was organized to provide the military with relevant data, that could further help the armed forces in conducting operations in a different circumstances, such as natural disasters, combat etc. DARPA will now be interacting with the participants to ascertain their methodologies and their information collection techniques employed during the contest.

After the announcement of the contest, MIT had urged its members to get actively involved in the project, along with their friends. Furthermore, the institution also stated that, the winnings of contest would be distributed to all the volunteers who help out in the balloon hunt.

In the announcement given by MIT to its members, the organization said,

“We’re giving $2,000 per balloon to the first person to send us the correct coordinates, but that’s not all — we’re also giving $1,000 to the person who invited them. Then we’re giving $500 whoever invited the inviter, and $250 to whoever invited them, and so on.”

Video Courtesy: CNN.

Via ABC News.