The ingenuity of mankind knows no limit. Even in these recessionary economically disastery times of crime-ridden misery, nothing is getting in the way of the human urge to push the boundaries of knowledge and explore the mysteries of unknown. For just last week, we saw the first of a new kind of space mission; a voyage to the heavens the like of which had never been seen before.

Yes, humanity has just managed, kind of, to create the first space flight by a piece of cheese.

And not some lame mild Tesco plastic brick of dairy muck, this was a 300 grams of 18-month matured handmade Cheddar acquired (or perhaps created?) by those famous navigators of the heavens, the West Country Cheesemakers group.

Attached to a weather balloon, this smelly yellow block was launched 30km up to enter the upper atmosphere, at 4am in the morning for no known reason. But although the cheese was fully provided with safety equipment - a parachute no less - the mission did not go entirely smoothly. In an echo of the various troubles suffered over the years by NASA et al. there was a huge communications failure. The onboard GPS device horrifically failed, leaving the poor bit of hardened cow-juice all alone, lost in space. Aargh. The scientists (?) were left wondering if they would ever see their cheesy wonder again, using space-maths to calculate that "it could land anywhere from here in Wiltshire to Hemel Hempstead". Talk about cheese-string in a haystack.

But don't panic, luckily Britain's most respected news organisation took the time to report a third, wonderful, story. Imagine the surprise "anonymous from Cressex" must have had to discover a block of the space-cheese adventurer, undamaged, in their garden.

Fortunately, just as any other sane person in the world would do after finding such a dairy treat on their lawn, they handed it in to High Wycombe police station. Who, apparently, somehow managed to take it seriously enough to know that they should be tracking down the original West Country cheese-scientists, who richly rewarded the finders not-keepers lady with a selection of farmhouse Cheddars.

Say Dom Lane, on of the instigators of Mission Cheese:

I may try a bit to see if it has matured at high altitude and then it will probably go into a glass case at our production offices.

Update: Sources close to the Poorhouse suggested that given the moon's recent wavery appearance, it may in fact have been a conspiratorial attempt to repair a critically failing crater.