If you watched the historic launch of SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft on Saturday, you may have noticed something unusual and kind of sparkly floating around inside the cabin with the astronauts.
No, your eyes definitely weren’t playing tricks on you, because there was actually another passenger onboard — a sequined, stuffed dinosaur.
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Suffice it to say, this just might be the best thing to have come out of the year 2020.
On May 30, Elon Musk’s SpaceX made history when it became the first private company ever to launch humans into orbit.
As Business Insider reported, this was also the first time astronauts have launched from the U.S. since the Space Shuttle Program officially ended nine years ago.
But the Crew Dragon spaceship wasn’t just carrying NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley, because one of them managed to stow away their son’s toy dinosaur aboard the craft.
Eagle-eyed viewers first spotted the sequined plushy during live footage of the launch from inside the cabin when it floated in front of the camera.
“Did anybody else see the stuffed sequin dino the astronauts took with them on the launch today?” one Twitter user asked. “It was adorable!”
Another person added, “HISTORY MADE! The first stuffed glittery toy dinosaur to launch into orbit!”
Some people actually spotted the adorable dinosaur on May 27, long before it was actually launched into space.
That was the day the rocket was originally scheduled to lift off before it was rescheduled to Saturday due to poor weather. In NASA’s live feed of launch preparations, we can see the plushy sitting in the third seat, right next to the astronauts, as it prepares to become the first toy dinosaur to ever go to space.
Unfortunately, it wouldn’t make history that day, but would only have to wait a few more before achieving its orbital dreams.
Okay, so now that we’ve established there was definitely a dinosaur aboard, let’s talk about why it made it to space in the first place.
We finally got our answer during a video tour of Crew Dragon, where Behnken and Hurley spilled the beans on their sparkly stowaway.
After showing viewers around the controls and demonstrating the effects of zero-gravity, they finally addressed the elephant in the cabin. Or, should I say, the dinosaur.
As it turns out, there’s a very sweet reason for this plushy’s appearance in space.
“We did end up with one stowaway on board our vehicle when we launched today,” Behnken said as the long-necked dinosaur floated into view, “It was not just Doug and I who accomplished the launch here. We do have an Apatosaurus aboard.”
“We both have two boys who are super interested in dinosaurs,” he explained. “We collected up all the dinosaurs between our two houses and “Tremor,” the Apatosaurus, got the vote from the boys to make the trip into space today with us.”
Believe it or not, “Tremor” isn’t the first stuffed animal to ever be launched into space, though it *is* the first toy dinosaur to do so.
Last year, Elon Musk shared that a stuffed earth toy flew into space aboard an un-crewed test of the Crew Dragon to be used as a “super high tech zero-g indicator.”
In fact, Hurley’s own wife, Karen Nyberg, an astronaut herself, sewed a stuffed dinosaur for her son while aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in 2013 and sent home photos of the sweet, finished product.
The dinosaur currently floating its way through space right now has been identified as a TY Flippables Tremor Dinosaur.
Understandably, people who are still earthbound have fallen madly in love with the sparkly toy and want one for themselves to commemorate the historic launch. Although the TY company is no longer manufacturing it, SpaceX had eager consumers covered.
Shortly after Saturday’s launch, the company began offering the dinosaur through its official SpaceX store for $25. However, the page appears to have since crashed due to high demand. So if you want to get your hands on one, I suggest you either go the ol’ resale market route, or simply keep checking back to SpaceX to see if they’ll be available again in the near-future.
h/t: Business Insider
