KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 17 — It looks like there’s a surprise fifth passenger with the Crew-1 mission which went to the International Space Station (ISS) abroad SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.
In a video clip circulating online, a plush toy version of Baby Yoda – from Disney+’s Star Wars series The Mandalorian – was spotted bobbing about inside the cabin.
Baby Yoda forma parte de la última misión de SpaceX por un motivo muy importante: https://t.co/2DPQfo8uce pic.twitter.com/FwGRMk2fLc
— 20minutos.es (@20m) November 17, 2020
However, having a stuffed toy aboard spacecraft is nothing out of ordinary.
Such lightweight dolls are often used as the “zero-gravity indicator” to determine when the spacecraft is in orbit and has reached a microgravity environment where Earth’s gravity no longer holds any power.
This, however, is not the first time SpaceX astronauts have taken cute zero-gravity indicators for their trips.
In March 2019, SpaceX chief executive officer Elon Must tweeted an image of a test launch, featuring a cute Earth-shaped soft toy.
Super high tech zero-g indicator added just before launch! pic.twitter.com/CRO26plaXq
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 2, 2019
The four astronauts – Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker from Nasa and Soichi Noguchi from Japan – on Sunday became the second-ever crewed flight of a SpaceX spacecraft.
The newly-launched capsule with the astronauts aboard successfully arrived at the ISS, where they will stay until April.
The Dragon capsule arrived after a 27-hour fully-automated flight from Nasa’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.