SpaceX Test Rocket's Secret Payload: Wheel Of Cheese
HAWTHORNE, Calif. (AP) -- The California rocket company that launched a spacecraft into orbit and successfully returned it to Earth this week has revealed its secret payload -- a wheel of cheese.
Space Exploration Technologies on Thursday released photographs of the wheel in a container that was bolted to the floor of its Dragon capsule for Wednesday's test flight from Florida.
SpaceX says the flight of the round of Le Brouere was a tribute to the Monty Python comedy team, which had a famous cheese shop sketch.
The capsule parachuted to a Pacific Ocean splashdown and the cheese is now on a barge headed to California.
The Hawthorne-based company is the brainchild of PayPal co-founder Elon Musk. He's developing rockets and the Dragon spacecraft for NASA supply missions to the international space station.
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
