Papa John's honors British astronaut Tim Peake by putting his face on a pizza
This is one way to welcome an astronaut back to Earth after a six-month stay in space.
Papa John's Pizza is planning to deliver a pizza to British astronaut Tim Peake when he returns to Earth from the International Space Station later this month.
"We can’t imagine not being able to eat pizza for six months and so if that’s what Tim wants as his first meal back on Earth, that’s what we’ll give him!" Papa John’s Senior Marketing Director, Andrew Gallagher, said in a statement.
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The company also photoshopped a truly ridiculous looking pizza with Peake's face on it complete with corn, pepperoni, peppers and rocket (also known as arugula).
The Papa John's pizza promise comes after Peake mentioned during an interview with the BBC that he wants to eat pizza after coming back to Earth from space on June 18.
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"Well, the unhealthy version would be pizza," Peake said. "The healthy version would be a nice fresh salad with some fresh fruit. Both, actually, I really crave."
It makes sense that Peake would crave both pizza and fresh food.
Astronauts and cosmonauts mostly eat rehydrated meals during their six-month stints onboard the orbiting space laboratory. Occasionally the crewmembers get a shipment of fresh fruit or vegetables, but those deliveries are few and far between.
Bready, crisp foods like pizza are problematic on the Space Station because they can produce crumbs, which are hard to clean in the weightless environment of the outpost.
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In all likelihood, Peake will not get his Papa John's fix as his first meal because the astronaut will be landing in a remote part of Kazakhstan before heading home.
"Tim will be delivered a Papa John’s pizza of his choice once he’s back on Earth, more likely when he’s back in the UK than when he’s just landed! He can choose whichever pizza he’d like, so if he wants the Tim Peake pizza, then that’s what he’ll get," Gallagher said.
Pizza Hut actually delivered a pizza to the Space Station in 2001 aboard a Soyuz after months of testing the ingredients for spaceflight.
During NASA's space shuttle era, Domino's Pizza considered delivering pizza to space or even meeting astronauts with a hot, fresh pie just after landing.
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Miriam Kramer worked as a staff writer for Space.com for about 2.5 years before joining Mashable to cover all things outer space. She took a ride in weightlessness on a zero-gravity flight and watched rockets launch to space from places around the United States. Miriam received her Master's degree in science, health and environmental reporting from New York University in 2012, and she originally hails from Knoxville, Tennessee. Follow Miriam on Twitter at @mirikramer.
