Chicken Sandwich Flight to Near-Space Delayed Again (Updated)

A mission patch designed by Kentucky Fried Chicken for a promotional campaign that will place a chicken sandwich on a high-altitude balloon.
A mission patch designed by Kentucky Fried Chicken for a promotional campaign that will place a chicken sandwich on a high-altitude balloon. (Image credit: KFC/World View)

Updated 6/28: The World View KFC flight is now scheduled for Thursday, June 29. The launch window is scheduled to open at 8 a.m. EDT.  

A high-altitude balloon flight that would have carried a chicken sandwich to the edge of space has been delayed again, due to wind conditions on the ground.

Today (June 22), World View Enterprises was scheduled to launch one of its Stratollite high-altitude balloon systems on a four-day test flight carrying a peculiar payload: chicken sandwich from Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC). The launch was also delayed from its original launch date, June 21, because of weather conditions.

"Due to weather, we won't be launching the Zinger today," KFC wrote on Facebook. "But technically mankind has waited all of eternity to launch a chicken sandwich into space, so a little longer probably won’t hurt. Updated launch date to come."

World View tweeted that the delay came because of "increased ground wind conditions," and suggested the next launch will likely be Saturday.

During its four-day flight the balloon is expected to reach altitudes of up to 50,000 to 80,000 feet (18,300 to 22,900 meters). It will be the "longest controlled stratospheric balloon flight with a commercial payload in history and the first-ever multi-day mission of the World View Stratollite flight system," according to a statement from KFC.

The flight is part of an advertising campaign by KFC but serves as a real test flight for World View, which is aiming to use high-altitude balloon systems for applications including weather monitoring, Earth imaging and near-space tourism.

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Calla Cofield
Senior Writer

Calla Cofield joined Space.com's crew in October 2014. She enjoys writing about black holes, exploding stars, ripples in space-time, science in comic books, and all the mysteries of the cosmos. Prior to joining Space.com Calla worked as a freelance writer, with her work appearing in APS News, Symmetry magazine, Scientific American, Nature News, Physics World, and others. From 2010 to 2014 she was a producer for The Physics Central Podcast. Previously, Calla worked at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City (hands down the best office building ever) and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California. Calla studied physics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and is originally from Sandy, Utah. In 2018, Calla left Space.com to join NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory media team where she oversees astronomy, physics, exoplanets and the Cold Atom Lab mission. She has been underground at three of the largest particle accelerators in the world and would really like to know what the heck dark matter is. Contact Calla via: E-Mail – Twitter