A stratospheric embarrassment.
What you need to know
- Samsung’s SpaceSelfie campaign was designed to, you guessed it, send the first selfie to space.
- The company used an image by Cara Delevingne as the face of the campaign, with Samsung customers also able to submit their own selfies to be beamed to space.
- The campaign met a disastrous end when the satellite carrying the Samsung device met inclement weather.
The Welke family welcomed an unexpected otherworldly visitor at their farm in Michigan last week, as a Samsung-branded satellite that the company hoped would launch its marketing rep to the stratosphere landed on their yard. It all came crashing down, though, when the contraption’s landing went awry, and it chose the Welke farm as its eternal resting place.
Samsung blamed inclement weather for the unfortunate occurrence, telling WNEM,
“Samsung Europe’s SpaceSelfie balloon came back down to earth. During this planned descent of the balloon to land in the US, wether conditions resulted in an early soft landing in a selected rural area. No injuries occurred and the balloon was subsequently retrieved. We regret any inconvenience this may have caused.”
The landing was anything but soft for Nancy Welke, who said she was shocked and could not believe what had just happened. The company’s representatives later flew out to the farm to ensure that the Welke family and their horses were safe, which they thankfully were.
The SpaceSelfie campaign was designed to give the South Korean giant bragging rights to claim the first selfie sent to space. The company headlined the campaign with a selfie featuring actress and model Cara Delevingne bearing a peace sign and an astronaut’s helmet. The company also encouraged its fans to send their own selfies to Samsung’s Mission Control, which would then beam the images to the satellite to display on the onboard Galaxy S10 5G.
The space smartphone
Galaxy S10+
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The power user’s choice
You get more of the things that matter with the Galaxy S10+: more screen, more battery, another front camera, and (optionally) more storage. You pay for the privilege of getting a little more but otherwise an effectively identical phone to the GS10, so choose wisely.
