Space: the final frontier. This is the voyage of a homemade rocket carrying the fearless Hello Kitty as its sole passenger. Its mission: to explore the effects of altitude on air pressure and temperature, and to boldly go where no Kitty has gone before…
Yes, it’s amazing what school kids these days are able to do. A 7th grade student at Cornerstone Christian School in Antioch, California built a rocket as a science project and sent it up into space with a Hello Kitty doll aboard. Well, maybe not exactly into space, but pretty darn high up into the atmosphere, since the rocket reportedly reached a height of approximately 28 km (17 miles) before the balloon attached to it expanded to 53 times its original size and burst, whereupon the rocket fell back to earth. Apparently, Hello Kitty made a safe landing in a tree about 76km (46.5 miles) away from the launch site. Hmm, that’s one heck of a nifty school science project, wouldn’t you say?
What’s particularly neat about this experiment is that GoPro Hero2 cameras were attached to the rocket to capture the entire journey on video.
Isn’t the footage amazing? I’m sure this must have been a first even for Hello Kitty, traveling into the stratosphere and enduring temperatures as low as -39°C (-38°F). Who would have thought that the mascot cat from Japan would ever be caught on video against the backdrop of a beautiful far-away earth? And you’ve got to love the pink ribbon logo for breast cancer awareness on the rocket!
Well, once again, we have to say that Ms. Kitty has expanded the boundaries of her activities. Indeed, the sky really is the limit in this case for Ms. Kitty, and of course, aspiring young space engineers. Bravo!!
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