Photo – NASA
He’s a little Beagle with a big imagination.
His first space trip was on Apollo 10 in 1969. Not quite to the moon, but close enough. He wasn’t actually on the craft, but NASA nicknamed the flight for him because it was “snooping” for a landing site for the real moon mission, the flight of Apollo 11 in July, 1969.
Since then, Snoopy has been associated with NASA and its space flights.
Yes, it’s true he isn’t a “real” dog.
But in fact he was real to his creator, the late Charles M. Schulz, and he remains real to millions of his fans around the world.
And on the recent uncrewed Artemis 1 flight test on November 16, 2022, he (or a plush version of him) went along to test for the moment that the spacecraft reached weightlessness. He performed perfectly, and returned safely on December 11, 2022.
How cool is that, Snoopy?