Author Topic: Astronauts on The Space Station Liked SpaceX's 'Earthy' Toy So Much They Kidnapped It  (Read 700 times)

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Science Alert by DAVE MOSHER, BUSINESS INSIDER 10 MAR 2019

SpaceX has a new all-star crew member, though it's anything but human: It's a $US20 plush-toy planet that astronauts call "Little Earth" or "Earthy".

Last Saturday, SpaceX launched its new Crew Dragon spaceship designed for NASA astronauts toward the International Space Station (ISS), where the vehicle docked on March 3.

No humans flew on the historic commercial mission, called Demo-1 – only a crash-test dummy named Ripley, 400 pounds of cargo, and the fuzzy toy Earth. However, NASA described the mission as "absolutely critical" in its effort to replace the space shuttle (which retired in July 2011).

NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine even hailed the mission as "the dawn of a new era in American human spaceflight" after Crew Dragon came back to Earth on Friday. In the coming months, SpaceX and NASA will analyse data gathered during the flight to prepare Crew Dragon for its first human passengers: NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley.

In the meantime, three Expedition 58 crew members living aboard the space station – NASA astronaut Anne McClain, Canadian Space Agency astronaut David Saint-Jacques, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko – have adopted "little Earthy" as an unofficial rookie in training.

"He's going to welcome us aboard, probably, when we get there," Behnken said Friday during a NASA TV broadcast.

"I think Anne and David and Oleg have trained him up well. Hopefully he can walk us through the emergency brief and he's a full-fledged station crew member by the time that we get there."
Here's what Earthy has been up to, and when it may come back...

SpaceX's Demo-1 mission was designed to show NASA that its Crew Dragon spaceship is safe for flying astronauts.

So SpaceX put 400 pounds of cargo inside and placed a crash-test dummy in one of the vehicle's seats. The mannequin was named "Ripley" after the lead character in the "Alien" sci-fi movie series.

But seemingly on a whim, Elon Musk also tethered a toy Earth (made by the company Celestial Buddies) to another seat.



----At the end of a long day of work, the astronauts even set up a dinner date for Earthy. "A favourite of the crew, group dinner!" McClain tweeted. "The candlelight dinner was also attended by Paxi, who is from @esa [the European Space Agency]."



More: https://www.sciencealert.com/astronauts-on-the-space-station-liked-spacex-s-earthy-toy-so-much-they-kidnapped-it