Sometimes space feels so grand and out of reach, but it turns out that humans have been sending strange things up to space for a while. While most of these things had a scientific purpose or just tagged along with a payload, there is still the entertainment value within these objects. Who would have thought that Elon Musk would send his Tesla into orbit, or that Pizza Hut had a special delivery just to deliver to the astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS), and a giant disco ball nicknamed ‘Humanity Star’!
NASA has joined in on some of these launches, although they have to take more scientific approaches. One of the more interesting of NASA’s launches were the “Moon Trees,” which consisted of over 2,000 seeds of various trees. The seeds were held in a metal canister as Stuart Roosa orbited the moon. After landing, and during the decontamination process, the seeds spilt, and were then thought to be non-viable. But many of the seeds were collected, and surprisingly many of them were able to germinate (germination is the process of a seedling growing into a spore). A year later any remaining seeds were sent to different states for better germination results, while some stayed with their Earth tree counterparts; after all of these years there is no discernible difference between the moon trees and earth trees.
Not all companies are as serious as NASA when it comes to sending things up for entertainment. SpaceX is one of the more well known companies that have sent odd things up, like Elon Musk’s very own Tesla and a prop astronaut named ‘Starman’. ‘Starman’ was originally planned to orbit Mars (despite fears of it contaminating the planet), but its launch was overshot and now ‘Starman’ is orbiting the sun.
SpaceX also sent a gorilla suit up, though they didn’t know it at the time. Mark Kelly, a former NASA astronaut, smuggled a vacuum sealed gorilla suit to his twin brother Scott Kelly who was aboard the ISS. This resulted in the famous video of Scott Kelly chasing a fellow astronaut aboard the ISS in zero gravity. This stunt was meant to happen in 2015, but the unmanned SpaceX rocket blew up shortly after lift off – it was later done in 2016 successfully.
In 2001, Pizza Hut became the first food company to deliver to the ISS. The rocket was actually paid for by a Russian space agency, Roscosms, and the American astronauts aboard weren’t allowed to eat the food due to strict rules. The pizza had multiple adjustments made like extra seasonings were added due to loss of taste in space, and salami was used instead of pepperoni for a longer shelf life.
Then we have a giant disco ball that was secretly sent up by Rocket Lab. The disco ball was only three feet wide, but it held a total of 65 mirrors which allowed it to be seen to the naked eye from earth. This disco ball only orbited earth from January 21 to March 22, 2018. The reason for the short lived time in space was due to the ball re-entering the atmosphere seven months earlier than planned. The so-called “Humanity Star” was said to serve as a reminder about how fragile our place in the universe is.
