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Astronauts

Dogs are Not Hippos – Even in Space

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
October 30, 2012
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Soyuz spacecraft launches 32 fish, hippo to space station, space.com via Fox
“I think it’s going to be something special, and I will get unforgettable memories,” Novitskiy said in a NASA briefing before the mission. Novitskiy picked a small toy hippo, a gift from his teenage daughter Yana, to use an indicator of when the Soyuz reached the weightless environment of space.”
Keith’s note: Contrary to what some space bloggers and writers have suggested, this is not a “hippo”. Rather, it is a plushie version of Suni Williams’ dog “Gorbie” Indeed, she pulled the plushie version of Gorbie out for me during the on-orbit interview I did with her in September – more than a month before this recent Soyuz was even launched.
THIS is what a hippo looks like in a Soyuz.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

4 responses to “Dogs are Not Hippos – Even in Space”

  1. Susan Keddie says:
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    So how come you HATE SDO’s chicken but seem to love Gorbie? Are you a closet poultry-phobe?

    • kcowing says:
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      I like chickens. I just find the use of a rubber depiction of a chicken corpse as it appears just prior to rendering in a processing plant as a teaching tool to be flawed.

  2. hikingmike says:
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    So what’s going on here? I don’t quite get it. I went to the foxnews link and clicked the  [Launch Photos: Soyuz Rocket Blasts Off With Station Crew] and I see the same hippo shot you linked.