A bobblehead figure of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has gone where no mayoral bobblehead has gone before.
In June, Meghan Collins attached her Rob Ford bobblehead and GoPro camera to a helium-filled weather balloon, and sent the doll approximately 31 kilometres into the air.
The Earth's atmosphere is about 480 kilometres thick, and the Ford doll cleared the layer called the stratosphere, entering the mesosphere.
Collins is part of Cooperative Exploration, an organization she founded with family and friends that hosts hands-on launches of balloons into the Earth's atmosphere for parties, corporate events and schools.
Her 3-year-old son inspired the project when he told his mother he wanted to make the car an astronaut, and send him to space. Collins gathered the group and figured out a way to send his toy car as close to space as possible. The Lightning McQueen toy was sent by balloon 28 kilometres above the Earth's surface in April. Collins then posted the video on YouTube.
After the initial launch, Cooperative Exploration launched a St. Thomas Elgin General Hospital Foundation balloon to raise awareness for the campaign in May, then launched Ford a month later.
"He's known for being quite high and we thought, let's put him higher than he's ever been," Collins told CTV Toronto on Thursday, referring to the mayor's admission to smoking crack cocaine in May.
The Ford bobblehead was launched at a beach in Port Stanley, Ont. The doll can be seen flying past Lake Erie, then up into a cloud, where snow falls in front of the camera. It clears the clouds, and a blue glow can be seen surrounding the Earth.
The balloon then bursts and the doll and camera fall to the ground in Bright, Ont., approximately 100 kilometres away from the launch site. Upon landing, the doll's bobbling head snaps off. The entire journey took about 75 minutes.
