On April 12, 1961, the Vostok 1 mission was the first manned space mission to take off from Baikonur and it embarked Yuri Gagarin, who then became the first man in space. Since then, the race for space has accelerated and nowadays it is gaining momentum with the projects of China and the United States. But there are other countries, which have a little less resources, which are trying to make a place for themselves…
A kebab to infinity and beyond!
This is the case of Turkey, which founded its space agency in 2018 with the aim of being part of the countries that have conquered space. However, currently, the Turkish space program is only in its infancy. The country hopes to send its first mission to the Moon by 2023 and its first Turkish rover to our satellite by 2030.
In the meantime, a Turkish restaurateur has decided to speed things up this Saturday, April 9, by paying tribute to Yuri Gagarin. In effect, Yasar Aydin organized the sending of a kebab into space. To do so, he teamed up with an aerospace student, Idris Albayrak, who created a company that manufactures balloons to send them into space.
The kebab fixed on a pin was placed on a polystyrene tray itself attached to a box to withstand the conditions of space. The set was equipped with a camera and a GPS system. Everything was connected to a balloon inflated with helium which then flew to an altitude of 38 kilometers. The kebab is like this remained in space for almost 3 hours before the balloon burst making fall back to Earth 121 kilometers from the take-off location, in the Mediterranean.
Certainly, the kebab was still far from the limit of space located 100 km above our heads. However, the restaurateur is proud of this experience and intends to repeat the thing in the future to send it even higher. This is not the first time that a kebab has found itself in space. In 2018, a restaurateur had already sent a kebab into the stratosphere to celebrate the opening of his new restaurant.
