A new rocket designed to launch humans to the moon, Mars and beyond will launch next year from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
NASA uses stuffed animals on flights because when the little guys start to float, it indicates that the spacecraft has entered space’s zero gravity.
The Artemis I mission is scheduled to circle the moon and then return to Earth in February as a dry run without astronauts, making sure all systems are working for future crewed missions.
The upcoming mission announcement coincides with the release Friday of the second season of “Snoopy in Space,” the Emmy-nominated animated series on Apple TV+.
Stephanie Betts, chief content officer at media company WildBrain, said season one was the perfect foundation.
Back closer to home, the plush Snoopy’s gravity-monitoring task — it’s officially called the zero gravity indicator — will be far from the first stuffed toy used by astronauts.
Since then, an owl doll and an Angry Birds toy have been on the International Space Station, a plush R2-D2 was used as the talisman on a Soyuz mission in 2015 and a stuffed snowman Olaf from the movie “Frozen” has gone up.
“Someone had the idea of trying to bring more interest into the space program.
“The spacesuit had to meet all the requirements and be of the same quality that the astronauts would be wearing, both in the materials and what got approved.
“Space travel is almost become so normalized now,” said Schulz.