Category Archives: Space Travel

Geckos, some of natures most skilled climbers, may hold the key to cleaning up the enormous amount of debris clogging up the space around Earth. Scientists at NASA and Stanford have developed a prototype robot that can grip objects in space, the same way a gecko sticks to walls. Such a robot could be a critical tool for grabbing and relocating space trash, helping to clean up Earth orbit and make it much safer for space travel.

The robot capitalizes on the same concept that geckos use to climb. The animals feet arent actually sticky; theyre covered in thousands of microscopic hairs that, together, act like a flexible adhesive. To imitate gecko feet, the robot has special pads outfitted with thousands of tiny silicone rubber hairs, which are 10 times smaller than the hairs on your head. This allows the robot to use the same forces to grab simply by placing its pads on an objects surface.

Gripping objects in space the same way a gecko sticks to walls

And just like a gecko, the grip can easily be turned on and off. The hairs on a geckos feet are tilted so that the lizard must place its foot at a certain angle in order to stick. It can then simply remove its foot by pulling in a different direction. The hairs on the robot also have a tilt, so the gripper can easily remove itself from an attached object by pulling away in a different direction.

This kind of sticking technique could be crucial for getting ahold of unruly space trash. Much of this junk includes out-of-commission satellites or rocket parts that have run out of fuel, all moving at thousands of miles per hour in orbit. These objects are often spinning or moving erratically, and their surfaces can be relatively smooth and hard to grasp. But the gecko gripper, described today in Science Robotics, doesnt need a handle to grab any surface will do. Its a new way to handle these non cooperative pieces of garbage, Aaron Parness, a robotics engineer at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory who helped create the technology, tells The Verge.

Space debris threatens future space travel. Hundreds of thousands of pieces of abandoned space hardware zoom around the planet. That makes Earth orbit very crowded, and it clogs up valuable real estate. For instance, areas over major cities are prime places to put communications satellites. But if theres a piece of garbage in that position, its a very expensive piece of garbage there, says Parness.

Space trash is dangerous, too. Every now and then, the International Space Station has to change its position in orbit to avoid collisions with debris. But as the amount of junk grows, the probability of in-space collisions increases, and that leads to even more debris. That happened in 2009, when a Soviet-era satellite collided with one owned by the US company Iridium, creating thousands of pieces of debris. If enough of these collisions occur, eventually Earth orbit will be filled with so much junk that we wont be able to safely go into space anymore.

There are regulations in place to make sure that the stuff we put up must come down. Satellite operators have to dispose of out-of-service vehicles, either by burning these objects in Earths atmosphere or by putting them in a higher orbit called a graveyard orbit where they wont get in the way of functioning satellites. But these regulations werent in place when satellites were being launched throughout the 60s, 70s, and 80s, so theres a lot of old trash to watch out for.

If you want to grab something in space, almost nothing else works.

People have come up with innovative ways to take out the trash, such as burning hardware up with lasers. But grabbing this junk hasnt been an option. Space is a vacuum, so suction cups dont work; most trash isnt magnetic, so magnets wont help; and the extreme temperatures mean most glues wont work either, says Mark Cutkosky, an engineering professor at Stanford and one of the authors on the study, tells The Verge. If you want to grab something in space, almost nothing else works besides the gecko grip, says Cutkosky.

Geckos grips are unusual: the tiny hairs on their feet can get incredibly close to an objects surface nanoscale distances apart. And thats the key, says Cutkosky. You need to have really intimate proximity. This allows the atoms in the hairs to mingle with the atoms on a surface. The electrons of these atoms actually sync up in such a way that they cause an attraction between molecules. The force of each hair adds up, creating a strong overall attraction over the entire foot.

The feet or pads of the robotic gripper work the exact same way. The silicone rubber hairs are a fifth of the diameter of a human hair at 20 microns; theyre shorter than the width of a human hair, too, at just 60 microns tall. (A human hair is roughly 100 microns in diameter.) The robot is also designed to turn off its stickiness, just like the lizard. Motors inside pull the pads in the direction needed to get a grip. When the gripper approaches a surface, the motors make tendons inside the robot tighten, causing the hairy pads to move together in the right direction to stick. Then, when the robot needs to let go, the motors loosen the tendons, moving the pads in the opposite direction for an easy release.

The silicone rubber hairs are a fifth of the diameter of a human hair

This gripping technique has already been tested in space. Little strips of the hairs, called Gecko Grippers, were sent to the ISS in 2016 to see how well they worked in microgravity. But the team wanted to see how a robot, with the special motorized movement, fared in zero-g as well. So they took a gripping robot on a plane that simulates zero gravity nicknamed the Vomit Comet. The plane does parabolas in the sky to create short periods of weightlessness. Aboard the Vomit Comet, Parness used the robot to grip different types of shapes you might find in space, such as a sphere, a cube, and a cylinder.

Jiang et al., Sci. Robot. 2, eaan4545 (2017)

The motorized gripper worked just fine in zero-g sometimes even better than when gravity was in play. And when it came time to release the objects it had grabbed, the robot did so effortlessly. Nothing happens when he lets go, says Cutkosky. It doesnt jerk the object, and that was the key requirement. Its an absolutely smooth, effortless detachment.

Building on their success, the team is now hoping to test out the robots abilities in space. Earth orbit gets incredibly cold, and the researchers will need to build a new robot that can withstand such an unwelcoming environment. Plus, they need to prove that the adhesive technique can work just as well at much colder temperatures.

But if the robot does hold up, the team envisions two types of vehicles that could be used to clear up space debris in the future. One design is a large 2,000-pound satellite, equipped with a gripper that moves through space grabbing and relocating debris either to the graveyard orbit or so that it eventually burns up in the atmosphere. Such a vehicle wouldnt be able to clean up all the trash, but it could target either the most dangerous junk or the pieces lurking in valuable places in orbit. The other option is to create a tiny satellite, no more than a couple of pounds, that travels to one piece of debris and removes it from orbit. The vehicle wouldnt last for very long since it wouldnt have much fuel but the style is much cheaper to build and fly.

If the gecko didnt exist, humans would never have come up with this idea.

There even other applications beyond clearing up space debris. A gripping robot could be a valuable asset on board the ISS, and it could help on the outside of the ship for repairs and inspection. That could potentially cut down the number of dangerous and time-consuming spacewalks astronauts have to do.

No matter what the robot is used for, Parness says most of the design credit goes to the gecko. If the gecko didnt exist, humans would never have come up with this idea, says Parness. Its not an intuitive thing, we would never have invented it if it werent for the biological example.

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Want to get rid of space trash? This gecko-inspired robot may do the trick - The Verge

A KFC chicken sandwich launched on a mision to the stratosphere aboard a World View Stratollite balloon at 9:11 a.m. EDT (1311 GMT) on June 29.

In what appears to be a historic first, a fast-food chicken sandwich was successfully carried to the edge of space today aboard a high-altitude balloon.

The Kentucky Fried Chicken Zinger sandwich journeyed skyward aboard a World View Enterprises Stratollite balloon vehicle at 9:11 a.m. EDT (1311 GMT) from Spaceport Tucson in Arizona. While the live webcast cut out before liftoff, a representative for World View confirmed that the launch was successful, and KFC later released a video of the balloon taking off.

"Holy cow, that's some spicy, crispy chicken moving out at an average rate of 1,000 feet per minute [304 meters per minute]," the announcer in the KFC video said as the balloon lofted skyward. "The Zinger should arrive at target altitude in about 1 hour and 20 minutes, where the Zinger mission will officially begin."

The sandwich is scheduled to remain aloft for four days and maintain an altitude of about 50,000 to 80,000 feet (15,200 to 24,400 meters). During the flight, which is serving as an advertising campaign forKentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), the company will execute various activities to engage the public over social media, including a coupon drop, in which a coupon will literally be dropped from the balloon down to Earth.

"The team on the ground here is justifiably celebrating as they watch their months of hard work pay off," the video announcer said. "This is the greatest achievement in chicken sandwich space travel history. In all my years in this business I've certainly never seen anything like it. What a time to be alive."

The Zinger-1 mission will serve as a test flight for World View, which aims to make stratospheric balloons that can remain in flight for months at a time. The flight is scheduled to be the first "extended-duration development flight of [World View's] high-altitudeStratollitevehicle," according to a statement from the company.

World View's Stratollite high-altitude balloon begins its journey to carry a KFC chicken sandwich to the stratosphere.

World View's high-altitude balloons are designed to operate in a region of the atmosphere that is too high for most commercial airliners, but too low for satellites. The Stratollite vehicles are expected to be able to reach altitudes of up to 28.5 miles or about 150,000 feet (45.8 kilometers), which means they would remain below the Karman line; at 62 miles (100 km) above the Earth, this line is considered the boundary of "space."

World View prepared to loft a Kentucky Fried Chicken Zinger sandwich into space the morning of June 29.

The company has said it plans to use these balloons for scientific endeavors such as Earth imaging, weather monitoring and even astronomical observations. In addition, World View has announced plans to make balloons that can carry humans into the stratosphere as part of scientific missions or for near-space tourism.

While neither KFC nor World View has said exactly how much KFC paid for the flight, World View representatives said that the advertising campaign covered most of the cost of the test flight.

The launch was originally scheduled for June 21, but was delayed due to weather.

Follow us@Spacedotcom,FacebookandGoogle+. Original article onSpace.com.

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Chicken Sandwich Takes One Giant Leap for Food-Kind - Space.com

SpaceFlight Insider

June 27th, 2017

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. SpaceFlight Insider is proud to announce it has joined Patreon, a crowdfunding website that is a simple way for our loyal audience to contribute every month to our coverage of the space industry and get exclusive rewards in return!

For the last four years, we have been endeavoring,with a team of hard-working individuals, to produce daily content in the form of stories, exclusive interviews, a photographic library, videos, live webcasts, and more. In total, more than 100 pieces of content are produced each month along with coverage of launches from around the world.

In working to make our audience an insider regarding all things space, the SFI team has created one of the best launch calendars currently in existence, an ever-expanding gallery of photographs and video packages, a mission monitor page, that, unlike most, provides all the essentials to track missions in one central location and a database of launch vehicles, spacecraft and centers called the Hangar.

At present, SpaceFlight Insider is the only comparable media outlet to host live webcasts during launches at Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. We hope to expand that to other locations in the near future.

However, providing these services is a labor of love for the SpaceFlight Insider team. Regular travel expenses, equipment procurement, and maintenance, as well as paying editors, writers, and photographers, consumes much of what funds SFI has managed to acquire so far. All of these efforts require a great deal of infrastructure, manpower, and coordination to achieve.

We at SFI want to create a place where people can turn to for all the information they want regarding space exploration and development. The team aims to deliver high-quality video, audio, still imagery, and much more to give you an insiders view of the whole industry and we take your questions directly to those officials within NASA and other space-related organizations who can answer them.

SFI offers all of its services for free, but we could use your help to keep it that way. We ask those of you who are able, to help us not only maintain what we have doneso far but also to take even larger, bolder steps. We believe that with Patreon, this will allow us to truly make you the insider our name implies.

You can pledge any amount you want for as long as you feel comfortable. However, at five dollars, were going to start giving back to you. Head over to our Patreon page to see what we offer and what works best for you. Contribute what you feel is fair. If only one-third of our daily viewers were to contribute one dollar a month, thats just 12 dollars a year SpaceFlight Insider would finally be able to bring you the level of access that weve envisioned and that you deserve.

Our team has decades of experience covering the space program and we are focused on providing you with the absolute latest on all things space. If we cant pay the bills, let alone our staff which currently consists of mostly volunteers and hard-working space enthusiasts then we cant do everything we can to share the thrill of space exploration with the world.

If you like space and want more space news, launch videos, images, and podcasts, then help us by becoming a Patron of SpaceFlight Insider.

Tagged: Lead Stories Patreon SpaceFlight Insider

SpaceFlight Insider is a space journal working to break the pattern of bias prevalent among other media outlets. Working off a budget acquired through sponsors and advertisers, SpaceFlight Insider has rapidly become one of the premier space news outlets currently in operation. SFI works almost exclusively with the assistance of volunteers.

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SpaceFlight Insider has joined Patreon! - SpaceFlight Insider

Editors note: Canada Day 2017 marks the sesquicentennial of Confederation. While the anniversary is a chance to reflect on the past, The Conversation Canada asked some of our academic authors to look down the road a further 150 years - or Canada +150. What will our world and other worlds be like in 2167? Scientist Michael Dixon suggests there will be a distinctly Canadian advantage when it comes to growing crops on Mars.

Canadian researchers are leading an effort to grow crops in space, paving the way for humanity to live on other worlds and push the frontiers on Earth.

Food is the main obstacle to long-term space exploration. It limits how far away from Earth we can travel and how long we can stay in space.

We can stock enough food for inhabitants of the International Space Station or even for travel to the moon and back. But if we are to travel to Mars and support long-term exploration missions, we need bio-regenerative, self-sustaining food production systems. Or, in simpler terms, space farms.

Farming in space is probably one of the biggest challenges we will have to overcome if we are ever going to spend extended periods on the red planet within the next 150 years. But its a challenge Canadians can definitely lead in tackling.

Although people have signed up to be a part of the first human settlement on Mars, our next home planet is more likely to be one with fewer environmental challenges.

Mars has a miserable climate. Its average temperature is below -60, its atmospheric pressure is less than one per cent of Earths and made up largely of carbon dioxide, and it can be rather windy and dusty for long periods. There are also the dangers of radiation exposure, and without a molten core like ours on Earth meaning virtually no magnetic field the planets environment would have to be significantly altered if we were to ever live there.

However, thats not to say we wont be hanging out on the red planet. When Canada turns 300, we will have hundreds of space explorers spending decades searching for life on Mars. I say decades because a round trip takes two-and-a-half years, so when we do go, we will want to make it worth our while. This means setting up enclosed housing, research facilities and space farms. This is where controlled environment systems will come in.

Canada is among the worlds leaders in biological life support research and technology development. This is because when it comes to farming, the severe conditions of space are similar to those in the northern parts of our country. Trying to grow a tomato on Mars is much like trying to grow a tomato in a snowbank: You cant without creating a controlled environment.

At the University of Guelph, we are moving toward growing crops in space with the research we are conducting on controlled environment systems. Our ongoing work in this area has revealed that plants can function under some strange environmental conditions such as very low atmospheric pressures and much less oxygen than on Earth. This means we dont need enclosed structures that precisely replicate Earths atmosphere for plant-based life support systems on Mars.

In 150 years, we will grow food on Mars in inflatable structures. Inside, everything will be designed to ensure the highest crop yield. The intensity of light and even its colour or spectrum will be tailored for each individual crop. Air flow and pressure, temperature, nutrients, carbon dioxide levels and humidity will be strictly controlled to create the ideal atmosphere in which plants can thrive.

We will grow a conventional array of crops associated with a balanced and nourishing vegetarian diet. Most of the vitamins and minerals we need are available in plants and we will get our protein from soybeans and similar crops.

This huge variety of plants, or candidate crops, will be neatly packed or layered into a small space the opposite of the expansive Canadian prairies. These compact crops will be produced using limited amounts of water and zero waste, because away from Earth, you cant afford to throw anything away. We must learn to recycle everything, as it will be a matter of life and death extreme agriculture at its most challenging.

The work we are doing at Guelph is designed not only for space, but for Canadians and others worldwide who may live in places where food security is a problem and extreme agriculture is the only way to address it.

Today, we spend millions of dollars flying perishable food to Northern Canada, such as buying strawberries from Mexico for sale in Yellowknife. This doesnt make sense.

Sustaining our presence in the North depends on food production in the same way that sustaining our presence on Mars will. By creating these systems, we will be able to inhabit challenging parts of Canada, such as the North, and other parts of the world, such as the deserts of the Middle East.

Space exploration generates invaluable technology on all fronts. For food production, space exploration will enable us to learn how to grow crops almost anywhere and with as little impact on the environment as possible.

By the time Canadas 300th birthday rolls around, we will have overcome the challenge of living on Mars and the huge advancements we will have made to get there will serve not only space exploration but our own survival here on Earth.

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Space farms will feed astronauts and earthlings - The Conversation CA

A new NASA video explores the science of space gardening and what researchers are learning about plants in space.

In 2015, astronauts aboard the International Space Station ate the first produce ever grown in space. During Expedition 44, NASA astronauts Scott Kelly and Kjell Lindgren, as well as the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Kimiya Yui, chomped down on red romaine lettuce that was grown in the station's Veggie plant growth system in August of that year.

It was a big moment, and a necessary step toward NASA's goal to travel to Mars someday. [Plants in Space: Photos by Gardening Astronauts]

As the new video from the agency's video series "Science at NASA"explains, the ability to grow both edible and nonedible plants in space is essential for deep-space travel and the establishment of dwellings. Plants provide both a food source and the ability to recycle air and water, Anna-Lisa Paul, a University of Florida professor who researches how plants grow in extreme environments, said in the video.

While it was a major step toward someday being able to grow gardens on Mars, the lettuce taste test was nowhere near the end of this endeavor. Scientists aboard the space station and here on Earth continue to test how plants adapt to harsh environments.

Paul and her colleague Robert Ferl, also at the University of Florida, first launched plants into space in 1999, on space shuttle Columbia, and have been studying plant growth in space ever since.

The roots of plants grown on tilted soil on Earth grow in a slanted direction, which scientists call "skewing," according to the video.

Through their research, Paul and Ferl discovered that gravity doesn't actually affect the direction in which roots grow, as Charles Darwin had previously hypothesized. Darwin believed that skewing was partially due to gravity's effect on the roots, but Paul and Ferl discovered that plants grown in microgravity exhibit the same behavior, meaning that roots don't need gravity to seek out necessary nutrients.

Growing in microgravity did, however, change the plants' genetic response, according to the video.

"When living organisms are faced with environmental change, their response almost always involves a change in genetic expression," Paul said in the video. "To cope, they switch on and off certain genes."

The genes that changed are associated with the cell walls of plants, according to the video, though Paul and Ferl aren't yet sure what purpose this serves. They plan to conduct experiments to study this effect as well as other ways plants adapt to microgravity, and scientists aboard the space station will also continue to study plant growth in an effort to help people survive on Mars and beyond.

Follow Kasandra Brabaw on Twitter @KassieBrabaw. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

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Gardening in Microgravity: How Space Plants Are Adapting (Video) - Space.com

SpaceX is hitting a number of milestones this weekend. On Friday, Elon Musks space transportation company launched and landed a used rocket for the second time in its history a sign that the company could be nearing its goal to cut the costs of space travel.

On Sunday, the company expects to launch yet another rocket. Itll be the first time SpaceX has attempted to launch two rockets within the span of 48 hours.

It wasnt exactly intentional. The company pushed back the launch of its reused Falcon 9 from last weekend to this to give its crew time to replace a valve. But the double header, if successful, is a significant step toward the companys goal of shooting rockets every two to three weeks.

SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell told Reuters in February that she hoped the company would get to a point where it was launching rockets at that pace.

Tomorrows launch will position a second batch of Iridium satellites into space using an entirely new Falcon 9 rocket. The rocket used for the first batch, which was launched in January, was the one the company launched again on Friday.

This will be the companys seventh launch in 2017.

Of course, this is all in an effort to eventually go to Mars. Musk, who wants to eventually help colonize the planet, said he expects to send his first robotic mission to Mars in 2020. Four years after that, the famously ambitious executive predicted SpaceX will send its first manned mission Mars.

You can watch the launch tomorrow at Spacex.com/webcast and well update this post with video when its available.

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SpaceX will launch its second rocket in 48 hours on Sunday - Recode

In Brief Many experts assert that humanity must branch out to other parts of the solar system to ensure our survival. However, the effects of reproduction and human development outside of Earth have only just begun to be studied. Human Martians

Humans are gearing up to make the next journey into the relative unknown with the first manned missions to Mars, which could come as early as 2022. The long-term goal of these missions will be to colonize the Red Planet. Experts believe that space colonization and becoming a multi-planetary species is the only way to ensure humanitys survival.

There are plenty of obstacles beyond traveling to Marsthat we will need to overcome before long-term colonization becomes a possibility, such as terraforming the planet to make it more livable for us Earthlings. Further, once a colony is established, the goal would then be to flourish, ensuring the colonys survival in perpetuity. At this point, we are stepping into an interestingnew branch of human biology, reproduction, and human development outside of Earth.

According to Kris Lehnhardt, an assistant professor in the department of emergency medicine at The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, This is something that we, frankly, have never studied dramatically, because its not been relevant to date. But if we want to become a spacefaring species and we want to live in space permanently, this is a crucial issue that we have to address that just has not been fully studied yet. Lehnhardts full remarks can be viewed in the video above.

One study brought freeze-dried mouse sperm into space for nine months to see if space travel would affect the health of any offspring created by it. The mouse pups were born healthy, but they were born on Earth. This experiment showed that the radiation and other physical differences of space did not hinder normal reproduction. Even so, this does not mean that these findings would translate to embryos developing in space or on another planet, nor does it mean that the results would have been the same with human sperm.

The effects of lower gravity on fetal development have yet to be studied. A lack of Earth strength gravity could hamper normal human development. And even if the child was healthy for the environment in which it developed, the question then becomes: would that child ever be able to come to Earth?

The future of space colonization is unclear. Even if all of the technology comes together to allow for colonies to be established, biological factors may play a part in hindering the full potential of sustained colonies. At the very least, this would usher in a new era of human evolution.

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More Study Is Needed on Reproduction in Space If We Want to Colonize Mars - Futurism

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Stephen Hawking On Space Travel: Light Beams Will Help Humans Colonize Other Planets - International Business Times

Legislation aimed at making the UK the most attractive place in Europe for commercial space flight will be introduced over the next two years, the Government has announced.

The Space Industry Bill will feature new powers to license space ports, vertically launched rockets and space planes.

This will help the UK increase its share of the global space economy from 6.5% today to 10% by 2030, according to the Government.

It is hoped that space flights will generate new business opportunities (Gareth Fuller/PA)

It is hoped that space flights will generate new business opportunities for technology and tourism in remote areas of the UK.

Several coastal aerodromes that could be converted to space ports have previously been shortlisted, including Campbeltown, Argyll and Bute; Glasgow Prestwick; Stornoway, Isle of Lewis; Newquay, Cornwall and Llanbedr, Gwynedd.

It is envisaged space planes could fly from a British space port both to place satellites in orbit and to carry fee-paying passengers on sub-orbital flights. Small satellite companies would benefit from new options for low-cost and reliable access to space under the legislation, which was featured in the Queens Speech.

Read more from the original source:

Space travel from UK ports coming soon, says Government - Hereford Times

Mother Nature has delayed the launch of a KFC sandwich into the stratosphere. World View Enterprises, the stratospheric exploration company that is hosting theZinger 1 Space Missiona mission to take KFCs new spicy, crispy Zinger chicken sandwich to new heightsblamed wind for the grounding of its high-altitude Stratollite balloon system.

The companywill send updates once officials have confirmed the date and time for the next launch attempt. Those who really want to know when the sammy is headed to the skiesshould tune into KFC and World View social channels. According to World Views Facebook page, the next launch attempt will likely occur on Saturday.

An artist's rendering of the KFC Zinger Stratollite. KFC

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The KFC bucket satellite will be carried into the skies for a four-day flight via a specially designed high-altitude hot air balloon. These balloons can serve other slightly more grounded purposes, such as weather monitoring and tourism. According to Space.com, the balloon will reach an altitude of 60,000 to 75,000 feet above Earth, where nearly 20,000 KFC franchises currently reside.

KFC insists the mission isnt just an attention-grabbing marketing ploy. Funding a mission to send its deep-fried sensation out into near-space will provide useful information toWorld View for future, more serious expeditions such as taking real mammals for a ride.

Animalsthe living kindare no strangers to space exploration. Since the 1950s, a variety of companions have joined human astronauts aboard critical missions. The historical list reads like a page out of the biblical tale of Noahs ark. Geckos, monkeys, dogs, mice, rats, frogs, turtles, fish, silkworms, spiders, ants, fruit flies, bees and single-celled organisms have all made their way onto missions. Sadly, many have not survived. In 1989, NASA sent chicken embryos out into the great unknown.

But sending live animals to space is sooo 20th century.

The only crew member that will be (barely) alive on this mission is crisp lettuce that accompanies the fried chicken patty, mayo and sesame bun. Unfortunately, there is limited room in the satellite, which means the potato wedges, cookie and sugar-sweetened beverage that typically comes with the Zinger will be staying home.

But fear not! The moment will not be lost since the souped (sandwiched?) up satellite comes equipped with a custom robotic selfie arm. Even a chicken fillet wants to preserve special memories. The spacecraft has other features that likely have Neil Armstrong rolling around in his grave, including a space tweet module that will broadcast tweets from fans with the hashtags #ZingerSpaceTweet and #Pickme. Theres also a trap door from which the Zinger will drop the first-ever coupons for a chicken sandwich.

And finally, in the tradition of 1970s space travel, aboard the satellite also will be a gold cassette tape to broadcast Colonel Harland Sanders waxing poeticabout his chicken. You know, just in case extraterrestrial lifeforms turn out to be listening.

Excerpt from:

Don't Worry, KFC's Mission to Send a Zinger Chicken Sandwich to Near Space Will Still Happen - Newsweek