If you happen to be flying over a Melbourne suburb in the near future and you see a giant white kangaroo, don’t be alarmed. It’s science.

The 32-metre by 18-metre cardboard ’roo is part of an experiment to measure albedo, the amount of light reflected back into space.

“We call it our kangaroo from space because two satellites flew over [and] what they were doing was measuring the amount of light reflected from our kangaroo,” says Patricia Vickers-Rich, of Monash University (AFP). “We were supposed to put out a square… and we thought, ‘Well, why don’t we do an animal?’”

Apparently a koala and a lizard were proposed before the kangaroo was settled on. Maybe because, as The Age, which broke the story, notes:

It’s a massive “space roo” designed to do what kangaroos do best: bounce, but this one will be bouncing sunlight back into space as part of a global climate change experiment.

Another great quote from Vickers-Rich appears on Reuters:

Ice is like our big kangaroo. The ice reflects the light, so it gets rid of a lot of the heat that comes in.

It doesn’t show up on Google Earth just yet, but a proper set of pictures is online with The Age’s coverage. We’re now waiting for someone to form a band called Space Kangaroo and the Albedo Effect.