Darren Byrne sent me this link in an e-mail earlier today. Baby Bear is sitting right next to me struggling to keep still, he is so jealous and angry that he couldn’t go as well. He gets like this quite a bit, I must add…

http://thedw.us/post/63006115/move-over-moon-landing-m-a-t-and-k-m-s-are-the

Move over moon landing: M.A.T and K.M.S are the first teddy bears in space.

Cuddly astronauts M.A.T and K.M.S and two bear colleagues were decked out in custom-made space suits and blasted 19 miles above Earth on a two-hour expedition. […]

The teddy bears had to endure temperatures of -53C but had special spacesuits made by school children from the nearby Parkside and Coleridge community colleges. This stopped them from freezing solid on their epic trip.

The aim of the experiment was to determine which materials provide the best insulation against the freezing temperatures experienced on the flight.

Mr Hallam said: ‘We asked the children to build the space suits for the teddy bears and we monitored the temperatures inside and outside the suits.

‘The project was all about applying science into the real world. I think it’s taught them a lot about running a real experiment.’