On Jan. 28, 1986, the world watched in horror as the space shuttle Challenger exploded in the air, killing all seven crew members. Among them was Christa McAuliffe, a teacher from New Hampshire who was the first non-astronaut to be a part of such a mission.
However, there was one famous face who could have been a part of the Challenger crew: Big Bird.
Caroll Spinney, the man behind Big Bird since Sesame Street first premiered in 1969, recently revealed in an essay for The Guardian that he was approached by NASA to bring the beloved character aboard the Challenger mission. This story is one that Spinney has told for at least a decade, but it has recently come up thanks to press surrounding the new documentary about Spinney's life and career, I Am Big Bird.
“I once got a letter from Nasa, asking if I would be willing to join a mission to orbit the Earth as Big Bird, to encourage kids to get interested in space,” Spinney wrote in The Guardian. “There wasn’t enough room for the puppet in the end, and I was replaced by a teacher.”
As we all know, that teacher ended up being McAuliffe, who was brought on to join the Challenger mission as part of NASA’s Space Flight Participant Program, which sought to bring people of all different occupations into space. NASA confirmed these reports on Monday, saying that before the Challenger crew was finalized, there were early talks with the Sesame Street team about possibly making one of the characters a part of the Challenger flight.
"In 1984, NASA created the Space Flight Participant Program to select teachers, journalists, artists, and other people who could bring their unique perspective to the human spaceflight experience as a passenger on the space shuttle,” NASA said in a statement, as reported by NBC News. “A review of past documentation shows there were initial conversations with Sesame Street regarding their potential participation on a Challenger flight, but that plan was never approved."
Big Bird was one of the characters under consideration, as well as his teddy bear Radar, according to NBC News.
Although neither Big Bird nor any other Sesame Street characters ever made it into space, the classic children’s TV show has frequently partnered with NASA through the years. Astronauts like Buzz Aldrin and Sally Ride have visited Sesame Street, Elmo stopped by NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and props from the show, such as Cookie Monster’s cookie, were on board the Orion test flight.
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