However, during the development of space missions, the lack of funding led NASA, as well as other space research organizations, to resort to community fundraising methods.
By promising to carry peculiar items such as vinyl records, books, different types of cakes, or even human skeletal remains into space, NASA aimed to generate significant fees from wealthy philanthropists, artists, and major companies worldwide.
Whether intentionally or inadvertently, spacecraft have carried many strange objects into space. Here are the 31 strangest objects ever taken to space according to the Telegraph newspaper:
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Lego replicas of Galileo and Roman gods.
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A recorded audio of a mother’s kiss with her child.
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A toy lightsaber resembling the one from the iconic Star Wars film series.
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Photographs of human reproductive organs.
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Dirt from the renowned Yankee Stadium football field.
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A fragment from the Wright brothers’ first aircraft built in 1903.
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Two venomous golden orb spiders’ eggs.
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Several monkeys were taken to space, none of which survived.
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Astronaut Andy Warhol, during the Apollo 12 mission, drew a phallic shape on a small ceramic jar and took it to space.
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A drawing of Mickey Mouse.
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Some bones and eggshells of Maiasaura Peeblesorum, a duck-billed dinosaur.
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Samples of water from the world’s largest rivers.
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A part of the skeletal remains of space physicist Gerard K O’Neill (1927-1992).
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A recording of an F-111 aircraft flying through the sky.
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A USB containing over 25,800 messages from Australian citizens.
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£100,000 worth of advertisements from Craigslist.
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A beef sandwich.
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Sea urchin sperm.
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Numerous bags containing astronauts’ vomit.
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Four cans of Pepsi and four cans of Coca-Cola.
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Pizza Hut had to pay nearly £750,000 in 2000 to become the first company in history to deliver pizzas to astronauts in space.
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Many pots of mud.
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A giant wheel of cheese called A Le Brouere from the Monty Python company.
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An X-ray of a hand.
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A diagram of the DNA structure.
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A hamburger and a bag of french fries.
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A greeting message in Korean by artist Soon Hee Shin, saying “Please take care.”
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A sample of the microorganism “water bear” for experimentation.
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A sample of salmonella bacteria. Scientists found that bacteria tend to become more dangerous in the space environment.
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The famous HeLa 88 cancer cell line sample.
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An issue of the adult magazine Playboy.
