Generations of children across the world have been told not to play with their food, but for one British grocery chain, they are having fun with their food on a whole new level. They sent their food into space!
Recently, Iceland, a British supermarket chain, was celebrating a big birthday and they decided to mark it in an extraordinary way. The chain was celebrating 50 years of being open, and there was an item that had been with them since the very beginning: The versatile chicken nugget. In fact, the chain estimates that they sold more than 10 million chicken nuggets, chunks and strips last week alone. Sounds like those nuggets deserved to be celebrated!
So, Iceland partnered with Sent Into Space, and they set forth a plan for that small-but-mighty nugget, which is believed to be the first ever chicken nugget to be sent into space.
“2020 is a huge year for us as we celebrate our 50th birthday, and we wanted to find ways to mark the occasion, just like anyone celebrating a birthday in lockdown. What better way to show that our products are out of this world than by sending one of our customer favorites into space!” Andrew Staniland, Trading Director at Iceland, said in a statement. “We’ve all changed the way we shop in recent months and frozen food has never been so popular. We’re looking forward to continuing to celebrate our 50th year with customers and thanking them for their support.”
It ended up being quite the epic journey! “That’s right, Iceland asked us to launch a chicken nugget into space to mark the 50th anniversary of their store opening,” read a statement on Sent Into Space’s website, which went onto explain that humble chicken nugget took quite an extraordinary journey, traveling through the Earth’s atmosphere to an altitude of 110,000 feet (about 21 miles), where it then floated into Near Space.
“Near Space is the region between our livable atmosphere and Outer Space, and it starts at around 19,000 meters (about 12 miles) up when the atmospheric pressure reaches the Armstrong Limit,” read the statement, referring to the altitude at which water’s boiling point is equal to human body temperature. “Beyond this point, the nugget spent an hour floating up and around in space. Being a frozen nugget, it was unbothered by the low pressure and the extremely cold temperatures, which drop as low as -65°C!” the statement continued.
The chicken nugget took around 1 hour 45 minutes to reach 110,000 feet above the earth, which is quite the marvel when considering it only takes seconds to be eaten!
In a year with endless hardships and division, that nugget may have the right idea floating away from the planet!
