Cosmonauts throw commemorative USB Flash Drive into space

This Victory Day celebration is out of this world!

Two Russian cosmonauts have recently completed a unique spacewalk where their mission was to bring in samples from outside of the International Space Station – and to jettison a ceremonial Flash Drive into space. The remarkable event occurred on Wednesday 3rd February 2016 where Sergey Volkov and Yuri Malenchenko exited their space station to toss a flash drive into space containing commemorative messages to mark the 70th anniversary of Russian Victory Day.

Watch the video – courtesy of Cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko

To ensure the Flash Drive had the right amount of mass to be successfully thrown from the space station, the cosmonauts fixed it to an empty film canister and filled it with disposable towels. The bundle had to then be propelled into a retrograde orbit to that of the space station – before spiralling down to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Pretty amazing eh!

Now, we don’t have any details about the model of USB Flash Drive that made it into space, but we can tell you that the stored commemorative messages included: a video and messages from last year’s Victory Day celebrations.

Although this USB Flash Drive is a time capsule that will never be found  (soon it will be burnt up into non-existence by Earth’s atmosphere)  – wouldn’t it still be great to create a USB Flash Drive time capsule of your own? Our next blog will show you how!

To find out more about Flash Drives and their amazing uses, see our full range.



Thank you for reading,
Navdeep Chana