Pymoor crisps are stratospheric thanks to university team

PYMOOR-based crisp manufacturer Corkers can now officially claim their snacks are out of this world after they teamed up with the Cambridge University Spaceflight Team to send a packet into space!

The team of Cambridge University students designed a state-of-the-art balloon that sent the bag of Corkers, along with a video camera, more than 18 miles above the surface of the earth.

Their calculations and expertise gave them specific information about how high the balloon and its culinary cargo, would reach before the balloon popped and the crisps and camera started their decent.

They were also able to pinpoint a safe location for the contents to land, some 40 miles away from the Cambridge University take-off site in Mildenhall,

Suffolk.

During the three-hour mission, the crisps were not only tracked by the CUSF team but also space research teams across the country by the use of sophisticated weather and flight analysis and GPS equipment.

Rod Garnham, managing director of Corkers Crisps, whose previous career was in aircraft engineering, said: “It sounds like a prank, which to an extent it was because my business partner Ross and I can regularly be found in our local, planning bizarre things to try.

“But we were also keen to support local engineers and give them the opportunity to test some of their theories.

“With my engineering background I can appreciate the minute detail these guys had to go to in order to pull it off - they really are geniuses.”