Grocery Chain Launches a Chicken Nugget into Space

Not sure how most grocery stores celebrate their 50th anniversary (Coupons? Maybe balloons?), but the British supermarket chain Iceland marked its golden milestone in a super out-there way: It launched a chicken nugget into space. Yeah, seriously.

Working in collaboration with a stratospheric exploration group called Sent Into Space, the retailer, which specializes in frozen and prepared foods, rocketed the nugget to an altitude of 110,000 feet above the planet’s surface. (That’s the equivalent height of a stack of about 880,000 Iceland chicken nuggets, which are one of the chain’s most popular items, the Irish News notes.)

The humble nugget took off from a location not far from the chain’s headquarters in Deeside, North Wales and took two hours to reach its peak, where the temperature was minus 76 degrees Fahrenheit. It then hurtled back down toward Earth at a speed of 200 miles per hour before, at around 62,000 feet above ground, its parachute deployed, ensuring a safe, if a bit rumble-tumble, landing.

So … why send a chicken nugget into space? “2020 is a huge year for us as we celebrate our 50th birthday, and we wanted to find ways to mark the occasion, just like anyone celebrating a birthday in lockdown,” Andrew Staniland, the trading director at Iceland Foods, told the Irish News.

I mean, when you come right down to it, it’s no more unbelievable than the rest of 2020, really.

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