CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA – (CT&P) – Former U.S. House Representative Michele Bachmann will be launched into outer space in early June, according to anonymous sources within John Boehner’s office and officials from Space Exploration Technologies Company, the private corporation founded by billionaire Elon Musk. The ex-congresswoman from Minnesota will depart planet earth aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket specifically tasked with placing Bachmann in a stable orbit around earth until sometime after the 2016 presidential election.

“The plan is to jettison Bachmann as soon as the Dragon spacecraft achieves near-earth orbit,” said Gwynne Shotwell, president and CEO of SpaceX. “She’ll stay there, in a stable orbit, for approximately 18 months, tethered to a supply capsule with enough oxygen and Tang to sustain basic bodily functions and a bare minimum of brain activity. She should be able to function in about the same manner as she does here on earth.”

Bachmann will be supplied with enough oxygen and nutrients to barely survive the long and lonely assignment. Her regular prescription of anti-psychotic drugs will be dissolved in her drinking water.

When asked what Bachmann will be doing all that time, Shotwell said, “Not much. She’ll just spin around and around in empty space like Sandra Bullock in Gravity. We’re going equip her with communications equipment to report any anomalies she might encounter, but the whole idea of putting her up there is to make her shut her fucking mouth, so I doubt if anyone will be listening anyway.”

The idea of launching Bachmann into space originated in Speaker of the House John Boehner’s office. An aide to the speaker told CNN that Boehner and the Republican leadership had heard enough of her “kooky shit” to last a lifetime, and didn’t want “that crazy bitch” to screw up the GOP’s chances in the upcoming election.

Things apparently came to a head last week after Bachmann appeared on something called End Times Radio claiming President Obama was bringing about the end of the world by negotiating a nuclear treaty with Iran. She also raved on and on about “God’s time clock,” whatever the hell that is supposed to be.

As if she had not already appeared absolutely unhinged, Bachmann then claimed that Muslims have lusted after an atomic bomb for hundreds of years, apparently unaware that the damn things were invented during World War II.

Bachmann will return to earth after the election via SpaceX’s floating platform that has proved so reliable in the past.

“The woman is clearly bat-shit crazy and there’s no telling what kind of black eye she could give our candidate in the upcoming election,” said the aide to Boehner. “We’re already having a hard enough time with Cruz, Huckabee, and Carson making it look like the whole party belongs on a mental ward. This election is just too damn important to screw up, so we decided to launch the bitch into space. We debated whether we could just drown her and claim she was a witch, but we decided that would be unethical even by our standards, so we settled on the space thing.”

Mrs Bachmann has been told that she will be performing a critical task for her country by circling the globe watching out for near-earth asteroids and other threats to the globe. She told Sean Hannity of Fox News that she could not be more delighted with the mission.

“Sean, I’m thrilled to be of service to my country and to Christians everywhere,” said Bachmann. “It’s a real honor that I will be the first human being to see the giant rock that Jesus is going throw at us to kick off the End Time festivities. I just can’t wait until the entire planet is consumed by war, famine and pestilence, and adults and children all over the world are immolated in the raging flames of God’s holy love. I think it’s great!”

Although SpaceX has no immediate plans for placing anyone else into orbit around the earth, Musk has voiced a desire to colonize LV-426, a planetoid 37 light years away in the binary star system Zeta Reticulli. Idiot politicians and pundits on both sides of the aisle are high on his list of potential expedition members.