Meet the cute stuffed dinosaur that hitched a ride on SpaceXs historic launch

Astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley had some company on their historic flight to space today: a stuffed dinosaur tucked into one of the seats on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.

The toy was spotted during preparations for launch on Wednesday and Saturday, and geophysicist Mika McKinnon quickly identified it on Twitter as a TY Flippables Tremor Dinosaur.

Toys like this have flown with astronauts and cosmonauts for years. When the toy starts floating, it indicates to the buckled-in passengers that they’ve reached zero-g and are experiencing weightlessness. A plush Earth flew on the uncrewed test flight of Crew Dragon to the ISS back in March 2019. Just before launch, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted a picture, calling the plush a...

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