But fortune prevailed. Five days after the balloon disappeared, a beachgoer found the apparatus washed ashore about 20 miles north of where it had dropped into the ocean, and called the university. When the students arrived, they saw that the small padded lunch bag containing the circuit board for the telemetry equipment, and a SanDisk 1GB standard Secure Digital card, were thoroughly soaked by salt-water. Nearby were the shattered remains of the digital camera, which had been separated from the bag. Amazingly, the memory card, a SanDisk 128MB standard SD card, was among the rubble.