Now that’s out of the park! Cricket ball sent to the 'edge of space' on a balloon

In 1971 Alan Shepard played golf on the moon.

In 2007 Clay Anderson played American Football on the International Space Station.

And now, in 2014, a cricket ball has joined the exclusive club of sporting objects that have been sent to space - or at least to the edge of it, the Daily Mail reports. 

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) sent the cricket ball to the edge of space for what they claim is the first time.

It was a stunt for the start of a competition that starts today called the NatWest T20 Blast competition.

This sees 18 counties from England Wales compete in an 11-week season of cricket.

To perform the feat the ECB worked with a team of aeronautical engineers to launch the official match ball from Edgbaston Stadium, Birmingham.

The ball reached a peak altitude of 110,000 feet (33,000 metres), about three times the height at which a commercial airplane cruises.
It was attached to a helium balloon in order to ascend and endured temperatures of -54°C (-130°F).

At peak height the balloon popped, sending the ball plummeting to Earth at up to 500 miles (800 kilometres) per hour before a parachute deployed to bring it safely back to the planet in Newbury, Berkshire in near-perfect condition.

‘Ahead of the launch of the NatWest T20 Blast season, we wanted to do something that would reflect the competition’s exciting brand of cricket and vibrant in-ground atmosphere,’ said David Collier, ECB Chief Executive, in a statement.

‘By sending a cricket ball to the edge of space, we’ve come up with an innovative idea which vividly illustrates our own plans to make this summer’s NatWest T20 Blast competition a truly memorable experience for cricket fans everywhere.'
 

WHERE DOES 'SPACE' BEGIN?

The official boundary from Earth to space is said to be the Kármán Line.

This is a line named after Hungarian physicist Theodore von Kármán, who first postulated its existence, that is 62 miles (100 kilometres), or 330,000 feet, above sea level.

At this altitude, Earth's atmosphere is said to be too thin to support aeronautical flight and anything here can be said to be in the vacuum of space.

However, to truly escape from any influence of Earth one must travel further.

For example Earth's exosphere, a volume of molecules that are bound to our planet but with an extremely low density, extends out to 10,000 kilometres (6,200 miles).

Only 24 humans, those of the Apollo missions, have ever travelled beyond the edge of Earth's exosphere.