T
TINY
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Well at least she tried :biggrin2:
13-year-old Lauren Rojas is the toast of Twitter today for boldly sending her Hello Kitty doll where no Hello Kitty doll has gone before – 28,537 metres into the stratosphere.
In a video posted to YouTube last month, the Grade 7 student is seen building a small silver spaceship and weather balloon contraption, complete with an altimeter, thermometer, GPS tracker and several cameras to capture what inevitably becomes the sub orbital flight of Hello Kitty.
The project was part of a science assignment testing the effects of altitude on air pressure and temperature at Cornerstone Christian School in Antioch, California.
After several dizzying minutes of spinning through the sky, the weather balloon expanded to 53 times larger than its original size and burst open, sending the entire package back down to Earth.
The rocket was found in a tree, 76 kilometres from the launch sight, with Hello Kitty and the breast cancer awareness ribbon attached by Rojas still intact.
In the end it really turned out to be much more than a science experiment. It's something that we will remember for a long time," said Lauren's father Rodney in an interview with the New York Daily News.
Rodney, who helped Lauren with the project, purchased the Hello Kitty doll for his daughter on a business trip to Tokyo.
To date, their YouTube video has approximately 130,000 views, and while the majority of commentary on it is positive, at least one hardcore science lover felt the need to correct journalists who incorrectly stated that Hello Kitty went into "space."
As Scientific American’s Michael Moyer pointed out, the maximum heigh achieved by the rocket (about 28.5 kilometers) did indeed fall far short of the official boundary of space as recognized by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (100 kilometres.)
To be fair, Hello Kitty did surpass the height reached by a Lego figure sent 24 kilometres into the sky by two Toronto teens last January.
13-year-old Lauren Rojas is the toast of Twitter today for boldly sending her Hello Kitty doll where no Hello Kitty doll has gone before – 28,537 metres into the stratosphere.
In a video posted to YouTube last month, the Grade 7 student is seen building a small silver spaceship and weather balloon contraption, complete with an altimeter, thermometer, GPS tracker and several cameras to capture what inevitably becomes the sub orbital flight of Hello Kitty.
The project was part of a science assignment testing the effects of altitude on air pressure and temperature at Cornerstone Christian School in Antioch, California.
After several dizzying minutes of spinning through the sky, the weather balloon expanded to 53 times larger than its original size and burst open, sending the entire package back down to Earth.
The rocket was found in a tree, 76 kilometres from the launch sight, with Hello Kitty and the breast cancer awareness ribbon attached by Rojas still intact.
In the end it really turned out to be much more than a science experiment. It's something that we will remember for a long time," said Lauren's father Rodney in an interview with the New York Daily News.
Rodney, who helped Lauren with the project, purchased the Hello Kitty doll for his daughter on a business trip to Tokyo.
To date, their YouTube video has approximately 130,000 views, and while the majority of commentary on it is positive, at least one hardcore science lover felt the need to correct journalists who incorrectly stated that Hello Kitty went into "space."
As Scientific American’s Michael Moyer pointed out, the maximum heigh achieved by the rocket (about 28.5 kilometers) did indeed fall far short of the official boundary of space as recognized by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (100 kilometres.)
To be fair, Hello Kitty did surpass the height reached by a Lego figure sent 24 kilometres into the sky by two Toronto teens last January.
