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This adorable sloth briefly stole the spotlight during the JUICE launch

    Screengrab of sloth from ESA broadcast
    Enlarge / “S’up?” An adorable sloth was briefly robbed on camera during ESA’s JUICE launch live stream on Friday.

    European Space Agency

    Do you remember the Ariane 5 rocket that successfully lifted off Friday morning from French Guiana, aboard the JUICE (Jupiter Ice Moons Explorer) spacecraft? Exciting as the launch was for space fans, a random sloth stole many hearts when it bombarded the live-streamed feed on ESA Web TV. The courageous sloth – nicknamed Gerard or Jerry by viewers – stared calmly into a European Space Agency (ESA) camera with the rocket ready for launch right behind it.

    As Eric Berger previously reported, at 6 tons, JUICE is the largest space mission launched by the ESA and one of the largest by any country to the outer planets. The mission will explore Jupiter’s environment and probe beneath the surface of its icy moons (between 80 and 95 in total). It should arrive at the planet by July 2031. But on launch day, all eyes were briefly on Jerry. “Aside from the launch, this guy is absolutely the star of the broadcast,” science writer Nadia Drake wrote on ESA’s Facebook page.

    As far as everyone knows nothing bad happened to Jerry and he is very much alive and looking forward to the next missile launch. Previous animals that have stumbled near a launch have been less fortunate. Do you remember “Space Toad”? In 2013, when NASA’s LADEE unmanned rocket launched, one of three still cameras deployed around the launch area captured a small mid-air frog against a fiery plume in the background.

    NASA spokesman Chris Perry told ABC News at the time that the frog likely lived in the nearby wetlands around Virginia’s Wallops Flight Facility and was drawn to the area in hopes of finding an abundance of flies to eat. as there is a “puddle” near the launch pad for the large flood system that suppresses the launch noise and protects the pad. But since the frog appeared to be only 50 meters away from the rocket when it launched, it most likely met a fiery end. RIP Space Path.

    In 2013, an unlucky frog likely met its demise during the launch of NASA's LADEE spacecraft from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia
    Enlarge / In 2013, an unlucky frog likely met its demise during the launch of NASA’s LADEE spacecraft from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia

    NASA/WFF/MARS

    Then there was “Space Bat” in 2009: a bat that clung to the Space Shuttle’s external fuel tank Discovery just before the launch of the STS-119 mission at the Kennedy Space Center. That NASA launch site coexists with the Merritt Island National Wildlife Reserve, and while NASA employs a number of strategies to protect and warn local wildlife prior to launches, this particular bat was undeterred.

    The crew noticed the bat as they made their rounds to check for icing on the fuel tanks as the tanks were being filled. They thought the bat would wake up and fly away long before it was time to launch, so they continued with the preparations. But even the roar of the igniting engines and a vibrating spacecraft weren’t enough to dislodge the creature. Not only did it stay in place, it changed position a few times so that it wasn’t cryogenically frozen in place by the low temperatures of the liquid hydrogen used as the propellant. And it hung throughout the launch while NASA officials tracked its location with infrared cameras. Like Space Toad, the brave bat probably perished trying to become the first-ever bat astronaut. RIP space bat.

    It's Space Bat! This free tail bat hung onto Space Shuttle Discovery as the countdown progressed for the 2009 launch of STS-119.
    Enlarge / It’s Space Bat! This free tail bat hung onto Space Shuttle Discovery as the countdown progressed for the 2009 launch of STS-119.

    Kennedy Space Center has also had problems with turkey vultures, most notably in July 2005 when a vulture struck Discovery‘s external tank just after launch. The vulture also perished. NASA engineers worried the impact could be catastrophic — a turkey vulture weighs between three and five pounds, enough to knock foam chunks off critical parts of the shuttle. It was determined that a loose piece of foam weighing only 1.7 pounds was the cause of the Space Shuttle in 2003 Colombia disaster after it hit the shuttle’s wing. Fortunately, the tragedy did not repeat itself, except for the loss of the vulture. RIP Space Vulture.

    Local woodpeckers proved to have better luck when they suffered a famous delay in 1995 Discovery launch by piercing as many as 78 holes—some as large as 4 inches in diameter—in the foam insulation of the shuttle’s external fuel receptacle and solid rocket booster connections. Workers had to use a 20-25 story crane to repair some of the higher holes. Why the birds decided to peck holes in the shuttle was a bit of a mystery, a conservation manager told UPI at the time, since they normally peck for food and the foam didn’t contain any tasty insects that the pecks like to consume. . Nor does the foam have the same acoustic properties for drumming – a way for the birds to mark territory.

    The JUICE sloth was equally lucky, causing no damage or delay to the launch. Europa decided to fly the mission after NASA’s Galileo and Cassini probes found that some of the moons around Jupiter and Saturn were covered in ice and likely harbored large, subsurface oceans where microbial life could exist. Because the spacecraft is so massive, it will take several planetary flybys to build up the energy to reach the Jovian system. JUICE will fly past Earth three times, as well as Venus, before orbiting Jupiter in 2031. Then, from 2031 to 2034, it will make nearly three dozen flybys of Ganymede, Europa, and Callisto, exploring their icy shells in greater detail. JUICE descends to within 125 miles of some of these worlds, giving us by far our best view yet.