A Company Launched Weed Into Outer Space And Now You Can Smoke It

If this sounds like the sort of plan that was brainstormed by a group of high cannabis-entrepreneurs, that’s because it was.

The online cannabis guide company, Herban Planet, and Level Up, a dispensary based in Scottsdale Arizona, recently teamed up on a project to send the first pound of marijuana into outer space. The strain they chose to launch into orbit was none other than Thin Mint Girl Scout Cookies.

As Tagan Dering, the Chief Product Officer for Herban Planet tells Leafly, the project essentially began as a PR stunt aimed at attracting eyes to the newly established all-things-cannabis company. But once the idea took root, Herban Planet realized that not only would this be the first weed sent into outer space, but that they would also be the first people to smoke weed that’s been in outer space. From this realization, Herban Planet launched their “Space Weed Bro” product, which gives marijuana enthusiasts the unique experience of consuming astronautical bud.

“Every Space Weed Bro bud takes a trip to zero gravity space, guaranteeing an ultra-premium product that has reached for the stars. When you try Space Weed Bro, you’ll experience what few people ever have.” Reads the company’s website.

To pull it all off, Herban Planet got in touch with another company, Sent Into Space—the self-described “home of near space exploration”—to help with the mechanics of safely sending a pound of marijuana into space. To accomplish the feat, the company sealed their pound of marijuana in an airtight container, which was then attached to a weather balloon rigged up with a GPS and camera.

In the video documenting the project, viewers can watch the parcel of marijuana floating ever higher above the Arizona desert until it finally reaches outer space. You’re momentarily graced with the novel sight of weed soaring high above the earth, adrift in the black, inky darkness of outer space, before the weather balloon bursts and the package of newly minted “space weed” is sent tumbling back towards the desert. At its peak, the package of weed reached an altitude of about 118,000 feet.

The Herban Planet, Level Up and Sent Into Space team then uses the GPS attached to the package to track down the weed. Eventually, they found the package, safe and sound, in the Arizona desert.

Chris Rose, one of Sent Into Space’s founders, tells Leafly that he’s “very interested to take a look at and see just what effect these adverse conditions had on the marijuana. It could be that the exposure to additional UV has had an effect, the solar radiation could certainly have had an effect, the blast freezing by temperature, above the atmosphere could have had an effect—all things that we intend to use the technology at our disposal to try and divulge.”

The team at Herban Planet has already made the space weed available at Level Up’s dispensary.

It will be a while before Rose can determine whether or not the package of marijuana’s quick foray into outer space had any discernible impact on the bud. But either way, the thought of smoking “space weed” is probably cool enough.