Shaun the sheep, the cartoon puppet, will be the first 'passenger' of the Artemis I space mission to return to the moon whose launch could be in one of the three windows between the end of August and the beginning of September.
To announce the departure of the puppet of the popular sheep protagonist of the animated series Shaun the Sheep was David Parker, director of human and robotic exploration of the European Space Agency (ESA).
"This is an exciting time for Shaun and for us at ESA", Parker announced, "and we are very happy that he was selected for the mission."
"And even if it could be a small step for a human being, he went on to jokingly paraphrase the famous words of the first moon landing with the Apollo missions, it is a giant step for all sheep".
The launch of Artemis I is scheduled with a SLS rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida that will have the task of bringing an Orion space capsule - without humans on board - into orbit around the Moon.
A pioneering mission, which will serve to test the capsule, for the following ones that have the ambitious goal of bringing humans back to the surface of our satellite.
Systems on board the capsule will collect a series of fundamental information for the next human flight and the popular and ironic sheep protagonist of the cartoons has been chosen to guide the first mission.
To prepare for flight, a small Shaun puppet has already participated for years in the training program for astronauts and for familiarization with the Orion spacecraft and its European service module by traveling to various locations in Europe and the United States to see different aspects of the mission.
A 'training' that will now be told in a series of blog posts on the ESA before the launch.
