- Samsung's "Space Selfie" project sent celebrity selfies on a high-altitude balloon approximately 20 miles into the atmosphere.
- The project ended three days early as it landed in pieces in rural Michigan.
- Nobody was hurt and no property was damaged.
A PR stunt has come crashing down for Samsung. A high-altitude balloon that the company launched has prematurely fallen to Earth and crashed on a horse farm in Michigan.
The Michigan news site MLive reported first on the crash, which appears to have been met with both amusement and confusion from the owners of the farm in Merril, located in Central Michigan near Lake Huron. Nancy Welke told the paper that she and her husband were about to work with their horses outside on October 26 when they heard a loud noise. After searching for the source, they found a strange object on their property.
Turns out that just a few days prior, Samsung announced it had "unveiled the world’s first selfie sent to space, captured by actor, model and philanthropist Cara Delevingne and shown for the first time during a celebrity-filled event at the newly-opened Samsung KX experience space." The event was meant to promote Samsung's new S10+ phone.
“I’m honored to be Samsung’s SpaceSelfie pioneer! To celebrate, I wanted to take the first group selfie to go to space. I can’t wait for my fans to join us in space and get their hands on a SpaceSelfie of their own,” Delevingne said at the time.
But it's unlikely that Delevingne's selfie ever made it to official space. As Gizmodo points out, the contraption contained two logos: Samsung's and another from Raven Industries, a South Dakotan company that makes altitude balloons and agriculture satellite devices.
"If it's something that's been attached to a high altitude balloon, it's probably gone up around 25km to 35km [22 miles]," Hugh Lewis, astrophysics professor at the University of Southampton, told the BBC. "From there, you can see the sky is black, you are out of most of the atmosphere, you can see the curvature of the Earth, it looks like space—you can see the photographic appeal."
While official designations of the beginning of space differ, most international agencies hold by what's known as the Kármán line, which is 62 miles (100 km) into the atmosphere. If Samsung ignored the Kármán line, they're not alone. Virgin Galactic has also drawn controversy over hewing below the marker.
Representatives from Raven soon appeared at the Welke farm to pick up their device. According to Welke's description in MLive, the representatives from Raven were cagey about their identities and the craft's purpose, telling them it had "launched from Iowa yesterday and was being used to take pictures."
“Early Saturday morning, Samsung Europe’s SpaceSelfie balloon came back down to earth,” a Samsung spokesperson said in a statement. “During this planned descent of the balloon to land in the U.S., weather conditions resulted in an early soft landing in a selected rural area."
The Welke farm wasn't the only location affected by the unexpected landing. The nearby town of Wheeler saw a large balloon land on a power line, prompting a power outage for two hours while crews worked on removing the previously high-flying balloon.
It's unclear what will become of the Space Selfie project, which was supposed to end on October 31. Samsung appears to have taken down the project's website.
David Grossman is a staff writer for PopularMechanics.com. He's previously written for The Verge, Rolling Stone, The New Republic and several other publications. He's based out of Brooklyn.
