It turns out the sky is not the limit when it comes to a good old-fashioned practical joke.
Here we explore some of the best pranks carried out in space, from a forbidden sandwich to a gorilla at large on the International Space Station (ISS).
These pranks show the lighter side of space exploration.
Related: Scientist admits ‘space telescope’ photo is actually chorizo in tasty Twitter prank
A smuggled sandwich
One of the earliest practical jokes carried out in space involved a contraband sandwich.
On Mar. 23, 1964, during NASA’s first crewed Gemini flight, Gemini III, pilot John Young produced a smuggled corned beef sandwich from his spacesuit pocket shortly after launch.
He offered fellow astronaut Virgil “Gus” Grissom, mission commander some but soon realized it probably wasn’t the best snack for the flight. The transcript from the mission (opens in new tab) says it all.
C = Command pilot (Gus Grissom)
P = Pilot (John Young)
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In an interview with Life Magazine (opens in new tab) Young explained that “Wally Schirra had a corned-beef sandwich made up at a restaurant at Cocoa Beach a couple of days before I hid it in a pocket of my spacesuit”.
Young explained that Gus “had been bored by the official menus we’d practiced in training and it seemed like a fun idea at the time.”
But in reality, a several-day-old corned beef sandwich probably wasn’t the best snack to smuggle aboard.
“I hadn’t counted on the pungent odor in a closed cabin,” Young told Life Magazine.
Unexpected delivery
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NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson pulled off an impressive prank on the ISS on Feb. 13, 2017.
Whitson packed herself into a cargo bag, enlisting the help of NASA’s Shane Kimbrough and ESA’s Thomas Pesquet to surprise their Russian crewmates, Andrei Borisenko, Sergey Ryzhikov and Oleg Novitskiy.
“They were quite surprised when I popped out!” Whitson wrote in a Twitter post (opens in new tab).
Pesquet also tried to squeeze into the cargo back but unfortunately, it didn’t quite work out.
“I tried … I but I didn’t fit!” Pesquet wrote on Twitter (opens in new tab).
Gorilla on the loose
Astronaut Scott Kelly is responsible for one of the most outlandish pranks in space when he…
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