Sky is the limit

The samosa captured in the sky by an accompanying camera. Pic Courtesy/Screenshots from the Chai Walla Video

Restaurateur Niraj Gadher of Bath, UK, who runs the Chai Walla restaurant, launched a samosa and a wrap into space, only to have to ask a stranger to rescue it when it reappeared 300 miles away. The food was put in a box, and attached to a helium balloon along with a GoPro camera and a GPS tracker. After two failed attempts, the third time the package slowly took flight, and the camera captured its every move, rising over the Bath skyline and into the sky, where it even came close to an airplane. However, the GPS malfunctioned when it went higher into space, and it was gone.

Gadher launching the samosa in space

The next day, the GPS miraculously came back to life, alerting Gadher that it had landed in a forest in Caix, France. After an exchange of messages on social media, he and his friends found an Instagram user who hesitantly agreed to forage for it in the wild. After driving for an hour, Alex Mathon chanced upon the remains of the balloon in the middle of a field, with a GoPro in it. The food was possibly wolfed down by the local wildlife. "It was like a treasure hunt, I thought it was crazy! We usually see this kind of story in the United States. Well, this is in a lost field in Picardie," Mathon told France3.

Niraj Gadher, owner of Chai Walla, with the package containing the samosa and the wrap

Gadher's video of the samosa's space odyssey on YouTube garnered over 58,000 views in three days. "I love space and I wanted to find a way to combine it with my business," Gadher said to Somerset live. Concerned about the environmental impact of the two helium balloons that got away, he promised to be more organised in the future. Surprisingly, this is not the first time a samosa has made it into space. Indian American astronaut Sunita Williams also carried her favourite food on her trip to space.

Meanwhile...

French wine, headed home after year in space

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In this file photo from November 2, 2019, provided by Space Cargo Unlimited, researchers from the company prepare bottles of French red wine to be flown from Wallops Island, to the International Space Station. PIC/AP

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