THE first Highland Coosmonaut is to be launched into “near space” as part of a new tourism campaign announced by VisitScotland, celebrating Scotland’s connection to the first Moonwalk.

Primary school children are being invited to name the heroic cuddly toy Highland coo, which will be sent almost 40,000 metres into the stratosphere wearing a Clan Armstrong tartan spacesuit.

The Scotland Is Out Of This World campaign will mark the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission and US astronaut Neil Armstrong’s historic walk on the lunar surface.

Ohio-born Armstrong was proud of his Scottish heritage. The ancestral home of Clan Armstrong is Langholm in Dumfries and Galloway and in 1972 he become the town’s first and only Freeman.

VisitScotland has teamed up with Sent Into Space to send the cow into the sky attached to a weather balloon – with footage of its journey released in time for the Moon landing’s anniversary.