A brand new record could have just been set for the fastest-moving sloth on the earth.
And not only any sloth — a three-toed sloth.
“It’s a three-toed sloth, not a two-toed sloth, because apparently that might be too fast for me,” said Crew-7 pilot Andreas “Andy” Mogensen, a Danish astronaut with the European Space Agency (ESA), from on board SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft “Endurance,” which was launched from Florida early Saturday morning (Aug. 26).
Now on his solution to a six-month stay on the International Space Station, Mogensen, together along with his three crewmates Jasmin Moghbeli of NASA, Satoshi Furukawa with JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Konstantin Borisov of Russia’s federal space corporation Roscosmos, are in Earth orbit traveling 17,500 mph (28,200 kph).
As is “Sasha” the sloth.
The typical speed of a three-toed sloth (on Earth) is 0.15 miles per hour (0.24 km/h).
Sasha had a reason to maneuver. Because the astronauts’ “zero-g indicator,” it was the sloth’s job to start out floating within the cabin when the spacecraft entered orbit, signaling to the crew that they were now within the microgravity environment of space.
“I would really like to introduce our zero-g indicator, which was chosen by my three children,” Mogensen radioed to Earth via SpaceX’s mission control in Hawthorne, California. “They selected the sloth since it is one in every of their favorite animals.”
Mogensen recounted that on a visit to Costa Rica, he and his family were in a position to see sloths “within the wild,” particularly on one memorable occasion.
“We were on the beach when a sloth — a really young sloth — appeared within the trees above us and frolicked,” Mogensen said. “It was a really special moment for us as a family.”
Not that his children didn’t even have a second, less complimentary reason for selecting a sloth.
“Moreover, it’s what my children wish to call me — with strong encouragement from my wife,” Mogensen said. “I’m all the time the last to go away the home at any time when we’re going anywhere. Personally, I feel it’s with good reason, but they are saying I’m the slowest person alive, which can be why it’s a three-toed sloth.”
The practice of flying zero-g indicators will be traced back to the very first person to fly into space, Soviet-era cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who took a small doll with him on his 1961 mission to observe it float. Since then, other Russian missions have done the identical and it became a custom.
When SpaceX began preparing to fly astronauts in 2019, it borrowed the tradition, which has also been adopted by other corporations and NASA. Sasha the sloth will meet “Suhail,” the symbol of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) astronaut program and Crew-6 zero-g indicator, when Crew-7 reaches the space station on Sunday.
Other dolls recently flown on SpaceX missions include a co-branded Construct-A-Bear wearing an Axiom Space AxEMU spacesuit; a “Little Thinker” Albert Einstein that flew with Crew-5; and an opulent modeled after the golden retrievers that function assistance dogs at St. Jude Kid’s Research Hospital.
The Crew-7 zero-g indicator appears to be a part of Wild Republic’s Ecokins line of “soft and cuddly” plush animals made out of 100% recycled water bottles. The 8-inch (20-centimeter) Ecokins Sloth Mini retails for $14.
Whether slow or fast, Sasha the sloth could have one other lesson to show about life in space.
“We’ve got a saying in space and it’s often true: Slow is smooth, smooth is fast,” said Jessica Meir, a NASA astronaut who co-hosted the space agency’s broadcast of the Crew-7 launch. “If you rush an excessive amount of, especially in space doing a spacewalk or anything that you just’re doing, you get in trouble. So slow is smooth and smooth is fast.”