A popular stop motion sheep is about to fly from Mossy Bottom Farm to the moon.
Shaun, the title character of the animated television series Shaun the Sheep, has been assigned a spot on NASA’s Artemis 1 mission, which is slated to launch later this month. The unusually clever Shropshire Lamb – in plush doll form – will fly far beyond the moon on NASA’s Orion unmanned spacecraft before returning to Earth in just over a month.
Shaun’s inclusion in the Artemis 1 Official Flight Kit (opens in new tab) was arranged by the European Space Agency (ESA), which built the power module for the mission.
“This is an exciting time for Shaun and for us at ESA,” said David Parker, ESA’s Director of Human and Robotic Exploration, in a statement (opens in new tab) published on Tuesday (2 August). “We are very pleased that he was selected for the mission and we understand that while it may be one small step for a human being, it is one giant leap for a lamb.”
Related: NASA’s Artemis 1 lunar mission: live updates
ESA worked with Aardman, the animation studio behind the stop-motion sheep, to arrange Shaun’s real-life space adventure.
“Aardman is excited to be making history with ESA by launching the first ‘sheep’ into space,” said Lucy Wendover, Aardman’s Director of Marketing. “As one of the first astronauts to fly on an Artemis mission (opens in new tab)Shaun is at the forefront of lunar exploration, a great honor for our woolly adventurer!”
“2022 marks the 15th anniversary of Shaun’s first television series, so what better way to celebrate than by traveling further than any sheep has gone before,” she added.
A spin-off from another Aaarman production, Wallace & Gromit, Shaun (the sheep) first appeared in the 1995 short film A Close Shave. The TV series debuted in 2007 and has since been seen in 180 countries. Two feature films followed, including 2019’s A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon, in which Shaun meets a visitor from space.
To prepare for this film, Shaun (again as a plush doll) flew with an ESA team in a parabolic aircraft that mimicked the weightless conditions similar to those in space.
“[The flight] provided a glimpse of the rigorous training that all astronauts undergo in preparation for the space flight he is about to experience,” said ESA in the press release announcing Shaun’s flight on the Artemis 1 mission.
Shaun has now undergone even more “training” and has traveled to various facilities in Europe and the US to “see” various aspects of the preparations for the lunar mission. Its journey has been documented and featured in a number of ESA blog posts (opens in new tab) until launch.
Artemis 1 will be the first integrated test of Orion and the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, paving the way for manned flights to the moon. As part of the Artemis program, NASA aims to land the first woman and first person of color on the lunar surface to establish a sustained presence on the moon.
Shaun isn’t the only pop culture personality to be boarding aboard the first Artemis flight. Four LEGO minifigures (opens in new tab) are also included in the OFK and a unique Snoopy doll (opens in new tab) based on the comic strip Beagle flies as the mission’s zero-gravity indicator.
The story was first published on Collect Space. Read the original story here (opens in new tab).
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