We’ve been exploring space for decades now; launching rockets and people out of Earth’s
orbit in the name of progress.
But, although our ultimate goal is to send humans to distant planets, lots of other objects
and creatures have been into space, too.
This is Unveiled, and today we’re discovering the strangest and most unexpected things we
have ever sent into space.
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Back in 2018, Elon Musk made headlines for blasting his Tesla Roadster into outer space.
The stunt was all part of a test flight for the Falcon Heavy rocket, and the car did have
a scientific purpose; serving as the vehicle’s payload…. but the launch also became a spectacular
PR move, drumming up plenty of excitement for Musk’s private space firm, SpaceX, as
well as his electric car company, Tesla.
Inside the airborne Roadster (which is still travelling through space!) is one, lonely
passenger; a mannequin dressed in full SpaceX astronaut attire and nicknamed “Starman”,
after the David Bowie song.
In 2019, this unusual spacecraft completed its first orbit around the sun, and it’s
believed that it might be able to drift peacefully through space for millions of years into the
future… before one day crashing back down to Earth or another solar system planet.
Whatever happens to it eventually, if you want to know exactly where Starman is at any
given moment, there are numerous websites you can use to track him.
He doesn’t stay in one place for long, mind you, since he’s zooming along at the incredible
speed of fourteen-and-a-half miles per second.
Elsewhere, not everything gets launched into space for a reason as comparatively sensible
as being an experimental payload.
In 2007, for example, a lightsaber was sent up by NASA to celebrate the 30th anniversary
of the first “Star Wars” movie.
It was a genuine prop lightsaber, too, as used by Mark Hamill (AKA Luke Skywalker) in
“Return of the Jedi”.
Various figures took part in escorting the object to NASA, including Chewbacca, Boba
Fett and R2D2, while the series director George Lucas attended the launch as NASA’s guest.
But, it’s not like this is the only movie prop to be put into space, either…
Toy Story’s Buzz Lightyear has been twice; once, like the lightsabre, on the Discovery
shuttle… and another time as a publicity stunt for the release of “Toy Story 4”
in 2019.
When the 2019 Buzz came back to Earth, it was sold on eBay to raise money for charity.
Neither is Buzz the only toy we’ve sent to space, though…
After its launch in 2011, the Juno probe took five years to fulfil its primary mission and
reach Jupiter, which is 484 million miles away on average.
But, even for such a momentous trip as that, humanity still sent some trinkets of its own
along for the ride.
Three special LEGO figures were designed to make the journey, representing Jupiter and
Juno (the king and queen of the Roman gods) and Galileo (the ground-breaking scientist,
astronomer and discoverer of Jupiter’s four largest moons).
NASA has actually had a long-standing link with LEGO, with the toy bricks seen as a good
way to get kids interested in science and engineering… meanwhile, the Japanese astronaut
Satoshi Furukawa even once built a LEGO model of the ISS while he was aboard the real thing!
That’s our fill for toys and the like today, but other space probes have carried interesting
packages, too.
The Voyager 1 and 2 crafts launched in 1977, for example, each holding a Golden Record
with a wealth of information about Earth and humankind on it.
These records, which really are gold-plated, were put together by a large team of scientists
led by the renowned astronomer Carl Sagan, who described them as being like a message
in a bottle.
They contain recordings of Earth sounds and popular Earth music, including the rock ‘n’
roll classic “Johnny B. Goode” by Chuck Berry.
Each record also carries 115 images of Earth, a message from the US president at the time
of the Voyager launches, Jimmy Carter, and even a brain scan of one of the research team,
Ann Druyan.
The thinking was that, if the probes were (or are) ever to be discovered, then the aliens
which find them will have a lot of information about our planet if they ever decided to visit
us – and, hopefully, they’d come in peace.
They might even be able to communicate with us directly, at least at first, since the
Voyager Records also have greetings in fifty-five different languages on them.
For another of the most interesting objects we’ve ever put into space, there was a poignant
bridge between spaceflight and on-Earth aviation - with the legendary flyer, Amelia Earhart,
being honoured by NASA.
Though she famously and mysteriously disappeared in 1937, Earhart’s memory has lived on…
and, in fact, the organization of female pilots that she founded, the Ninety-Nines, counts
the astronaut Shannon Walker among its numbers.
Fittingly, it was Walker who was chosen as the custodian for Earhart’s watch, taking
it on board a space mission to the ISS in 2010.
It was the very same watch that Earhart had worn during her pioneering, solo flights across
the Atlantic.
As well as the timepiece, Earhart’s scarf has been to space as well… this time it
was taken there by another astronaut, Randy Bresnik, who’s the grandson of Albert Bresnik
(who was Earhart’s authorized photographer).
Over the decades, of course, as spaceflight has become a more and more prominent part
of pop culture, there have been plenty of people dreaming about going to the stars.
The problem is that most have never gotten a chance to fulfil that dream, purely because
of how incredibly gruelling and difficult it is to actually become an astronaut.
The training is ultra-intense and takes years to complete.
But, among the most unexpected things to have been sent into space, we can count human remains.
Even if you never make it into space in life, there are some options in death - provided
you can afford the costly process of a space burial.
There are, now, many private companies which offer space burial services, and you can even
arrange to have your ashes pointed at specific celestial bodies – launched in the direction
of other planets in the solar system or the moon, for example.
Among the high-profile figures to have had their ashes in space, so far, are the creator
of “Star Trek”, Gene Roddenberry, the astronaut ‘Gordo’ Cooper Jr, the astronomer
and discoverer of Pluto Clyde Tombaugh, and the physicist Gerard K. O’Neill.
There have even been cases where dearly departed pets have been sent to space in this way…
but, of course, many living animals have also made the journey before now.
Probably the most famous non-human astronaut was Laika the dog, who unfortunately died
on the Soviet Union’s Sputnik 2 in 1957.
As for the first animals of any kind launched into space, that came ten years earlier, when
NASA sent fruit flies up in 1947.
After the flies, NASA were emboldened to then send up monkeys; although, again unfortunately,
lots of these monkeys didn’t survive their missions.
More recently, in 2011, some golden orb spiders were taken to live on the ISS for a while,
mostly to observe the effects of zero gravity on them.
But, arguably the strangest part of the natural world ever to find itself in space came in
1985, when the fossilized remains of a dinosaur were taken along on a NASA mission.
Then, in the late-‘90s, a small dinosaur skull travelled on board the shuttle Endeavour,
to the Mir space station.
Finally, a fun fact to finish, because did you know that there was once a pizza delivery
service in space?
The stunt unfolded back in 2001, when the restaurant chain Pizza Hut (noticing that
the food onboard the ISS was, well, limited) reportedly paid the Russian space agency Roscosmos
one million dollars for the privilege of delivering the first ever space pizza.
The pizza in question had to be reduced in size to fit into the space station’s small
oven, and the pepperoni topping had to be switched for salami so that it would survive
the journey.
But, when it finally arrived, it was eaten by the cosmonaut Yuri Usachov.
In truth, this space snack was but one chapter in a generally odd history between Pizza Hut
and the USSR (now Russia), with the brand once delivering a pizza to the former president
Boris Yeltsin, and even once enlisting the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev,
to star in a commercial for them.
But, that’s a story for another video!
For now, we’ve seen how cars, toys, movie props and even human remains and dinosaur
fossils aren’t limited to a life just on Earth.
Whether it’s for scientific gain, cultural impact, or just because launching things into
the sky is an exciting thing to do… it goes to show that anything and anyone can explore
the stars under the right circumstances.
But those are some of the strangest things ever sent into space.
What do you think?
Is there anything we missed?
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