Star Trek Guide

The Mandalorian's Baby Yoda Hitches a Ride on NASA SpaceX Mission

Season 2 of The Mandalorian is well underway, but The Child hasn't stopped his space adventures there.

The astronauts onboard the recent SpaceX Crew-1 mission showed off the Baby Yoda plushie they took on their adventures. The toy was reportedly serving an important role as a 'zero-gravity indicator.' Baby Yoda wasn't the first Star Wars toy to fill the role. R2-D2 took a ride on a Russian Soyuz rocket in 2015 to help figure out when zero-gravity hit.

NASA launched the first full SpaceX flight on November 15th, 2020 from the Kennedy Space Center. The two-stage Falcon-9 rocket used in this mission to the International Space Station is notable because the most expensive parts are reusable. The mission is also historic as it is SpaceX's first fully operational crewed mission. NASA is looking at this another key entertainment partnership to keep the ISS completely staffed in the coming years.

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For Baby Yoda, this was not his most recent space adventure, though it was his first for NASA and SpaceX. The second season of The Mandalorian started dropping new episodes on Disney+ as of October 30th. This season follows Mando as he tries to find any surviving Jedi to help raise The Child. As always in the life of Din Djarin, nothing is ever simple and the journey has been winding and fraught with peril.

Star Wars isn't the only science-fiction franchise to have an impact on real-life space missions. Space Shuttle Enterprise was the first orbiter in NASA's Space Shuttle program and was completed in 1976. It was named after the USS Enterprise, specifically the NCC-1701. This was the version of the storied Federation starship featured in the original Star Trek series in the 1960s, which is often cited as playing a role in inspiring astronauts to go to space.

Created by Jon Favreau, The Mandalorian stars Pedro Pascal, Gina Carano, Carl Weathers and Giancarlo Esposito. New episodes arrive Fridays on Disney+.

Source: The Independent

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