The balloons flight plan called for it to ascend to about 105,000 feet for 105 minutes and descend 23 minutes later within 30 miles of the space center.
"We wanted to test a new camera and payload and it worked great," said NASA astronomer John Horack, who directed the project and provided live audio commentary via the World Wide Web. "The balloon just popped."
Horack said he suspects the balloon may have had too much helium and descended too rapidly to adjust to the cold temperatures at high altitude.
The shower peaked over North America late Thursday evening and early this morning. The meteorites are debris from the comet Swift-Tuttle.
The balloons main sensing device is acrylic material acting much like flypaper to capture meteorite particles smaller than a grain of sand.
Horack said he doubted the scientific instruments captured any material from the meteor shower, but an inspection of the acrylic material would be made later today.
Scientists at the center are using the Perseids Live! mission as a test for a similar experiment to be performed during the Leonid meteor shower later this year.
Also aboard the balloon, is a camera similar to the one in the Hubble Space Telescope which provided a video feed of the meteor shower to TV viewers in the Southeastern United States and on the World Wide Web.
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