The cheap man's satellite
The “Planetscopeâ€
A team of NASA scientists plan to balloon into the sky in search of other planets - but before you think they’ve confused a Jules Verne book with a planning document, they aren’t planning to get all the way to alien shores there with nothing but air to hold them up. The balloons will hoist two-meter telescopes ten kilometers up where they can see space a lot clearer than their land-bound cousins.
Full article here:
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/03/the-planetscope.html