BILLERICA, Mass. — Something that was in outer space now calls Billerica Memorial High School home.

A balloon, along with a GPS tracking device and a GoPro camera, briefly reached outer space on June 5, rising almost 90,000 feet before the balloon popped. Billerica Memorial High School seniors in engineering design, who had graduated a few days earlier, were thrilled to meet their altitude goal.

“They were so excited about it, and ending with them on that note was perfect,” said Christine Tewksbury, who taught the science course with Matthew Flood. “It was the most exciting, most fun day I’ve had in my 10 years of teaching.”

Flood knows a Windham, N.H., high school teacher who has conducted these balloon experiments, and decided to incorporate the project into Billerica’s course. The teachers received a $1,600 Billerica Partners for Education grant, which covered everything: the helium, balloon, parachute, GPS, GoPro and more.

The 26 engineering students were the “driving force behind the class project,” Flood said. They researched the experiment and designed the successful apparatus.

They connected the balloon to a box with the GPS, which sent them the balloon’s position and altitude every two minutes. The GoPro took photos every 10 seconds. A microcomputer measured air temperature, pressure, humidity and light. They also included a buzzer to find the contraption when it landed.

Instead of releasing the balloon in Billerica, which would get tricky descending over Boston and near airplanes at Logan airport, the students traveled up to New Hampshire’s Keene High School away from traffic June 5. The 6-foot diameter balloon rose for more than two hours, expanding to 28 feet when it popped at 88,688 feet, according to the GPS calculation; the edge of outer space is 65,000 feet.

The balloon reached this maximum height over Goffstown. Outer space temperature: minus 57 degrees Fahrenheit.Once the balloon popped, it came rocketing down, with a maximum speed of 69 mph; it even dropped 50,000 feet in four minutes.

They were concerned it would land on Interstate 93 in Manchester, N.H., instead of a suburban area.

“We wanted some breathing room in the country, but it was dropping so rapidly,” Flood said. “Luckily, the parachute eventually did catch, and it began to slow down. Thankfully, it ended up in the dead end of a community.”

The GPS told them to head to Hooksett, N.H., a bit north of Manchester. The balloon was in the woods at the edge of a neighborhood, which was the perfect location, they said.

The apparatus traveled 63.8 miles. “What an adventure today turned out to be!” tweeted the Billerica Memorial High School’s physics account.