Interest
Hello Kitty Is Watching Over Us From Space
posted on by Bamboo Dong
Move over, Space Brothers; there's a new anime ambassador in space, and it's none other than Sanrio's Hello Kitty. She's onboard the Hodoyoshi-3 satellite, a small trash can-sized craft developed by Japanese researchers as part of a $40 million project to encourage private enterprises to work with satellites.
The project developers chose to work with Sanrio as their first private partner, thinking that it would get kids and Hello Kitty fans excited about space.
Although Kitty herself is only 4 cm tall (about 1.6 in), getting her on board was no easy task. Not only did the figure need to be covered in special paint to protect against UV and cosmic rays, and the vacuum of space, but researchers needed to be able to maneuver the satellite so that it would show Earth in the background when photos were taken of Hello Kitty.
Source: Reuters; image from Reuters
