The launch took months to plan.
A West Virginia couple’s gender reveal was out of this world – literally.
Lance Patrick and Ashley Blankenship launched a balloon into space to announce the gender of their child to their friends in a video shared by Caters News.
The pair enlisted the help of a local high school group, which regularly launches weather balloons, to send one up, along with GoPro cameras, to make the happy announcement.
“I had always wanted to send something up to the edge of space so this seemed natural when you’re excited and want to tell the world,” Patrick told InsideEdition.com. “I pitched the idea to Ashley and since we wanted to do something completely different than anything we’d seen, she agreed to let me be a big kid and have fun with it.”
A parachute attached to the weather balloon read “It’s a boy! Tesla Curtis,” once it opened, 108,000 feet above the ground.
“It actually took a few months to plan from printing on parachute fabric, sewing it into parachute, printing launch pad, scheduling, and editing final footage. But the actual launch and recovery happened on the same day.”
They also added a toy monkey dressed in a space suit and launched him into space along with the balloon.
“We put a stuffed animal ‘Spunk the Space Monkey’ in a little astronaut outfit. This is a gift for our son. He can say his stuffed animal went to space."
Patrick, 40, wanted to make the moment extra special by launching the balloon on the 20th anniversary of his father's death.
“We would have been excited at the reveal either way, but it was nice having a boy to connect with some of the emotions my late father might have experienced way back when having a little boy named Lance,” Patrick said.
Patrick said their friends loved the announcement.
“Everyone who saw the video freaked out and kept watching it over and over and over. They just went crazy,” Patrick said.
The couple’s baby boy, Tesla, is due on Dec 7.
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