It’s one giant leap for a little token.
The piece of Pittsburgh culture that locals will send 240,000 miles to the moon is a shiny gold token from Kennywood.
More than 20,000 votes were cast for the Heinz History Center’s #MoonBox campaign, asking Western Pennsylvanians what item would represent Pittsburgh in Astrobotic’s MoonBox program as part of the first commercial moon landing in 2021.
More than 51 percent of the vote went to the Kennywood Park token.
“We’re over the Moon about the opportunity to represent Pittsburgh in outer space, and we thank the History Center and Astrobotic for making this happen!” Kennywood General Manager Jerome Gibas said. “This Kennywood token doesn’t have an expiration date, so if it ever makes its way back to Earth, it can be used to buy some of our world-famous Potato Patch fries!”
Second place, with 14 percent of the vote, was a micro SD card with the theme song to “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” followed by a teeny tiny Smiley Cookie with 9 percent of the vote, the result of an Eat’n Park write-in campaign.
The list of choices included a Heinz pickle pin, soil from Moon Park in Moon, a piece of a Pittsburgh Steelers’ Terrible Towel, a photo of Toni Haggerty of Primanti Bros., and a City of Pittsburgh flag pin.
The Pittsburgh-based space robotics company Astrobotic partnered with the Smithsonian-affiliated History Center on the campaign, which celebrates the final weekend of the museum’s “Destination Moon: The Apollo 11 Mission” exhibition.
First Published: February 15, 2019, 2:27 p.m.