The Mail rports that a rubber chicken has been sent to the threshold of space as oart of High school project to study a solar storm.
The bird, called Camilla, was attached to a helium balloon and sent to an altitude of 120,000ft to test the levels of radiation in one of the strongest proton storms in years.It was the second time she has been sent to space.
The flight was carried out by Bishop Union High School students in California, as part of their science project, last month. Rachel Molina, 17, told NASA: 'Later this year, we plan to launch a species of microbes to find out if they can live at the edge of space.'
Romeo Durscher, of Stanford University, said: 'Camilla's trip to the stratosphere gave us a chance to talk to thousands of people about the radiation storm.'
During the two-and-a-half-hour flight, Camilla spetnt about 90 minutes in the stratosphere where temperatures and air pressures are like those on the planet Mars.
On the outside of her specially knitted space suit, she wore a pair of radiation badges She was recovered intact from a landing site in the Inyo Mountains.
Her spacecraft - a modified department store lunchbox, carried four cameras, a cryogenic thermometer and two GPS trackers.
Seven insects and two dozen sunflower seeds also rode along to test their response to near-space travel. The insects did not the survive the trip however. Camilla's radiation badges have been sent to a laboratory for analysis.
I only wish I had that sort of science project at school. I might have taken more interest in physics than I did
