Bizarre 'cheese space mission' fails soon after take-off

London, July 29 (ANI): A cheesemaker's stunt to launch a wedge of cheddar cheese into space fell flat on its face after the organisers lost contact with its payload just minutes after lift-off.

West Country Cheesemakers, who organised the stunt, attached 300kg chunk of cheese to a weather balloon, which lifted off from Pewsey, Wilts, at 4am on July 28.

The balloon floated up to the edge of space at 18.6 miles (30km) above sea level, where the 1.6m-wide helium balloon was expected to burst.he cheesemakers were expecting that the record-breaking capsule would then fall gently down to earth on a special parachute.

They even fitted the capsule with a digital camera to take pictures of the cheese in outer space.

But the on-board GPS satellite system, which was supposed to track the intergalactic dairy product, failed shortly after take-off.

It is still unclear whether the balloon managed to succeed in its bizarre mission.

West Country Cheesemakers believe the capsule landed somewhere between Wiltshire and Cambridgeshire.

The project took them 18 months of preparation, but cost less than 1,000 pounds.

Chairman Philip Crawford said that the feat was attempted to mark the 40th anniversary of the first moon landings this month.

"We are very proud of our authentic Cheddar which we make by hand on our farms and we set ourselves the very highest standards," the Telegraph quoted him as saying.

He added: "It seemed appropriate, therefore, that we should mark the anniversary of the first moon landing with a giant leap for cheesekind."

Fellow member Dom Lane said: "We've been tracking the trajectory and the current prediction is that it could land anywhere from here in Wiltshire to Hemel Hempstead. The GPS isn't coming through on the web so we might need listeners' help to find it because we're not sure where it is at the moment." (ANI)