Baby Yoda reaches space with Crew-1 astronauts onboard NASA-SpaceX flight: Watch

Popular fictional character 'The Child', also known as 'Baby Yoda' has reached space with the Crew-1 mission astronauts. The NASA crew has been sent to the International Space Station (ISS) in a SpaceX flight.

NASA and SpaceX on November 15 (local time) launched the Dragon's first operational crew mission to the Space Station and astronauts carried the Star Wars plushie along with them as a 'zero-gravity indicator' to show the rocket has escaped the Earth's gravitational pull. 

Read: How Elon Musk's Company SpaceX Became NASA's Go-to For Crewed Missions

'Baby Yoda onboard' 

When the Dragon capsule entered space, Baby Yoda was seen floating inside the cabin, which has astronauts Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker, and Soichi Noguchi aboard. During NASA's live stream on YouTube, communications specialist Leah Cheshier can be heard saying, "We've got Baby Yoda on board trying to take a seat right now," to which SpaceX engineer Jessica Anderson responded, "I think that's Victor Glover's seat, so I hope he doesn't mind."

Read: 'NASA Was A Disaster Before Us': Trump Takes Credit As SpaceX & Astronauts Liftoff For ISS

This is not the first time when a Star Wars plush toy has been used to indicate 'zero-gravity' by a team of astronauts on a mission. During a 2015 launch, R2-D2, another character from the Star Wars series, was used as a 'zero-gravity indicator' in the Russian Soyuz TMA-17M rocket. 

Read: US: VP Mike Pence, Wife Karen Watches SpaceX Launch

Earlier, SpaceX had launched its first astronaut flight on May 30 after it sent NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the ISS and then brought them back to Earth in August. Following an extensive study of flight data, NASA certified SpaceX as the first-ever commercial aerospace company to transport humans to and from space.

The Dragon capsule, including the Falcon 9 rocket and associated ground systems, is the first new crew spacecraft to be NASA-certified for regular flights with astronauts since the start of the space shuttle nearly 40 years ago. 

Read: SpaceX Set For First Operational Crew Mission To ISS, Will Carry NASA & JAXA Astronauts