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Baby Yoda arrives on ISS with SpaceX crew

Crew in capsuleImage source, NASA

On Monday, three astronauts from the USA and one from Japan took off in a rocket to the International Space Station (ISS).

The astronauts have now arrived after a 27-hour journey to the ISS... and they've taken a baby Yoda toy with them as the ship's microgravity indicator!

Nasa is flying the crew to the ISS so they can work there for six months, before coming back.

Image source, Getty Images

The baby Yoda toy was there during lift-off to show the astronauts when the rocket has escaped the Earth's pull.

In Nasa's livestream of the mission, communications specialist Leah Cheshier said "we've got Baby Yoda on board trying to take a seat right now."

Image source, NASA
Image caption,

The mission is the first full-length flight for Nasa by SpaceX, a private company which is owned by billionaire Elon Musk

The astronauts, Mike Hopkins, Shannon Walker, Victor Glover and Soichi Noguchi will be spending the six months at the ISS with three astronauts who are already there - Kate Rubins, Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov.

Image source, NASA
Image caption,

The four astronauts on the mission

Why do astronauts take toys to space?

On 12 April 1985, the Discovery space shuttle carried the first 11 toys into orbit, as part of mission STS-51D.

Some of the toys included a Slinky, a Yo-Yo, a paddle ball, and a toy car.

These toys were used as part of a physics demonstration to help show the effects of weightlessness in space.

Since then astronauts have taken all sorts of toys on space missions, and even filmed videos to help kids at school learn about physics.

In 2015, the Russian Soyuz TMA-17M rocket launched using an R2-D2 toy as the zero-gravity indicator.