This Is the First Doughnut to Go Into Space
Meet the pink, sprinkled doughnut that has gone boldly where no other doughnut has gone before — space.
Last week, Swedish brothers Alexander and Benjamin Jönsson attached a sugary breakfast pastry to weather balloons that they then successfully launched 20 miles above the Earth’s atmosphere. Amazingly, the icing and sprinkles both stayed in tact after traveling 85 miles over 5 hours.
The Jönssons were thrifty about the process: They launched the space doughnut from Norway, since the permit needed to catapult an object into the atmosphere there was free.
What was their motivation? According to Time, Alexander told a local Swedish news outlet called the Local: “I’m really into space and photography, and I used to play around with weather balloons back in school. Then we had the idea that we should send something really crazy up into space and thought ‘Hey, nobody has ever sent a doughnut up before.’”
The doughnut was in the air for about 84 minutes, according to CNET. The total venture cost about $1,100.
When the doughnut returned to Earth, it landed in the largest lake in Sweden, called Vänern.
No word on weather or not lake water adds flavor to doughnuts.
More earthly doughnuts to try:
