Americans have their flag implanted on the moon, Italians have a cannolo. Antonella Barbera, Paolo Capasso and Fabio Leone, three amateur scientists from Enna (Sicily), launched a model cannolo, symbol of the Italian island, to space and into the atmosphere.

“Sicilian Space Program,” this was how they called the project, is the funniest scientific experiment that worked out perfectly, and at a cost of mere 350 euros.

“Sicily has always been a place of negative connotations, mafia and unemployment. We wanted to lift up Sicily in our own way,” said filmmaker Fabio Leone, who recorded the project with Antonella Barbera.

Thanks to a balloon filled with helium, a sicilian cannolo with ricotta cheese, topped with a glazed cherry (made by Laura Caccamo) was sent to the outer space. Not a real one, of course, but just a model of it. A real one couldn’t have survived such journey.

The piece had to weigh under 2 kilos to qualify for the easiest official permits required to fly to high altitude.

Moreover, the body of the craft was made out of an insulated ice-cream box, which protected the camera batteries from temperatures that dropped below -50 degrees Celsius.

The cream-stuffed pastry roll was assembled on the “Cannolo Transporter,” a home-made spacecraft fabricated with recycled materials and equipped also with two cameras and a GPS tracker.

The balloon, launched at the peak of the Rocca di Cerere nature park, rose almost 30,000 meters. Then, because of the lack of atmospheric pressure, it burst and glided on the hills near the village of Bompietro and was later recovered by the team who followed the GPS signal.

The whole mission was filmed by the two cameras, which captured the most incredible moments of this typical sicilian pastry making its majestic entry into the infinity of the universe!