Rubber Chicken ‘Camilla’ Space Launch

When I think of rubber animals, I think of the rubber ducks in my bathtub during adolescence and possibly the 1992 spill of rubber ducks in the Pacific Ocean. Now, a new home for rubber animals has encrusted itself in space.

A group of high school students in Bishop, California launched a rubber chicken into space to measure the radiation from the sun. Not only does this chicken seem to lack the fear of everything other chickens do, but it is equipped with high-tech gear from NASA. The chicken, named Camilla, is suited up with radiation badges on the outside, and helium to float it on the inside. After reaching a height where the air pressure was close to the air pressure on Mars, the balloon floating Camilla popped and she parachuted back down to earth. Camilla carried a special box(found at your local supermarket) with four cameras, a cryogenic thermometer, and two GPS trackers. A week after this launch, Camilla was sent back up and recorded a proton count 30,000 times the normal amount this was enough to power every residence in NYC for two years! The group also sent insects on board, all of which died, and plant seeds to see if radiation will change the plant formation. That’s one chicken I would feel bad eating.