Enlarge / "S'up?" An adorable sloth briefly mugged for the camera during the ESA's livestream of the JUICE launch on Friday. (credit: European Space Agency)
Remember the Ariane 5 rocket that successfully lifted off from French Guiana on Friday morning, carrying the JUICE (Jupiter Ice Moons Explorer) spacecraft? As exciting as the launch was for space fans, a random sloth stole plenty of hearts when it photo-bombed the live-streamed feed on ESA Web TV. The plucky sloth—nicknamed Gerard, or Jerry, by viewers—stared calmly into a European Space Agency (ESA) camera with the rocket poised for launch just behind it.
As Eric Berger previously reported, with a mass of 6 metric tons, JUICE is the largest deep space mission launched by the ESA and one of the largest by any nation 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 all). It should arrive at the planet by July 2031. But on launch day, all eyes were briefly on Jerry. "Apart from the launch, this guy is definitely the star of the telecast," science writer Nadia Drake wrote on the ESA's Facebook page.
As far as anyone knows, nothing bad happened to Jerry and he's alive and well and looking forward to watching the next rocket launch. Past animals who've stumbled into the vicinity of a launch have been less fortunate. Remember "Space Toad"? Back in 2013, as NASA's unmanned LADEE rocket launched, one of three still cameras set up around the launch area captured a small frog mid-leap in the air against a fiery plume in the background.
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