Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Camilla the space chicken

Meet Camilla the space chicken, Her mission: to conquer the upper atmosphere in a knit space suit. She was fitted with radiation badges and sent aloft on a giant helium balloon launched by students at Bishop Union High School in Southern California.

The mission goal was to measure the energy released by an M8-class solar flare that occurred on March 10, 2012. Camilla was tucked into her spaceship, a lunch box and climbed for two hours until the balloon exploded. You can see Camilla pause for a moment in the low gravity before starting her 500 mph descent to Earth. Along with Camilla were seven insects and two dozen sunflower seeds, which the students are analyzing along with radiation measurements. None of insects survived, no word yet on the seeds.


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