Whether or not you’ll be glued to the TV this Super Bowl Sunday, you’ve got to admit that the word “space” makes any noun that follows roughly twice as cool. With that in mind: the coin being used for Super Bowl XLIV’s opening coin toss has been to space, orbited the Earth 171 times, and logged four million flight miles on Space Shuttle Atlantis’ STS-129 mission.
Space.com has the details:
The coin’s spaceflight was revealed in advance of a Jan. 27 presentation ceremony held at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, where the mission’s six astronauts returned the coin, along with other flown NFL memorabilia, to officials.
“Of all the things we brought onboard, this was truly one of the more memorable ones,” said STS-129 commander Charles Hobaugh during the ceremony.
“It is going to be thrilling for me to actually see the coin that we flew in space used for the game during the coin toss ceremony,” mission specialist Michael Foreman told a local news network at the Hall of Fame.
Below, a picture of the spacely sprocket coin toss medallion, which is being reproduced in a limited run of 10,000 and will be sold as a collectors’ item following the Super Bowl.
Related: Gizmodo’s article on “Space Football“
Ill-remembered SNES game Space Football: One on One (I have actually played this and it is pretty terrible)
(via Space.com. first image from Freaking News; second from collectSPACE)
