Last Saturday, at 15:22 on the East coast of the US company SpaceX launched into space from Cape Canaveral, the Falcon 9 rocket with the spacecraft Crew Dragon. The launch occurred in the social networks because of its valuable historical cargo on Board: two NASA astronauts were accompanied by plush dinosaur with glitter.

The launch was the first in history in which people in orbit delivered commercial spacecraft, and for the first time since the end of the program “Space Shuttle” nine years ago, astronauts were launched from the United States. And this is the first time a dinosaur has been in space (although the dinosaur fossils have to leave the confines of our planet). This little toy has become a part of the tradition of the astronauts to take aboard plush friends. Once the toys begin to float around the cabin, for the team it is a signal that the ship left earth’s gravity. Therefore they are often called “indicators of weightlessness”.

About 10 minutes after starting the dinosaur appeared live NASA aboard a Crew Dragon, where he serenely floated around the cabin of the spacecraft. The audience watched as he approached in his drift to the crew member Bob Behnken, and he pushed it aside. It’s unclear who and why did they choose dinosaur and if he had a name. It was first seen in live NASA during flight training last Wednesday, when the launch had to be postponed because of bad weather.


Source — Business Insider