New Zealand reaches space
A six-metre rocket blasted off from New Zealand today - the first ever private launch in the southern hemisphere.
Atea-1 carried its payload of 23,000 messages to dead people from families around the world to a height of around 150km.
The rocket hit its target speed of 5,000kph and managed to stay aloft for 20 minutes before splashing down off the coast of Coromandel.
Rocket Lab - the company behind the effort - is the brainchild of two New Zealanders, Mark Rocket (yes, he's changed his name) and Peter Beck.
The launch did come close to being cancelled three times, though, and there was a mad rush to pick up a $6 hydraulic coupling before lift-off.
While the Atea-1 is New Zealand's first homegrown and privately-funded space rocket it is not the first to be launched from th0se shores.
In 1963 an imported rocket was launched to a height of about 75km to conduct upper atmospheric research in a joint venture between Canterbury University's physics department and the Royal New Zealand Air Force.
Weird Science Factoid: If a surgeon in Ancient Egypt lost a patient while performing an operation, his hands were cut off. No pressure!
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Daniel Smith - a long time ago, in a galaxy far away just north of Watford, Daniel fancied himself as a scientist but turned out to be the worst scientist since that bloke who mapped out all those canals on Mars that turned out to be scratches on his telescope's lens. Luckily, he is now not working on the Large Hadron Collider inadvertently creating a black hole that would swallow the world but is safely behind a desk writing this blog, bringing you the fantastical underbelly of nature... weird science.
