When the International Space Station’s next mission blasts off from Florida next week, there will be a special souvenir on board: a small stuffed rabbit.
European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot and NASA astronauts Jessica Meyer and Jack Hathaway pose for a group photo during Europe’s final media event day before their launch to the International Space Station, Jan. 5, 2026, in Cologne, Germany. (FILE PHOTO/REUTERS)American astronaut and mother, Jessica Meyer, one of the four-member crew, revealed on Sunday that she will be taking her three-year-old daughter’s cuddly toy with her.
It’s customary for astronauts to board the ISS, which orbits 250 miles (400 kilometers) from Earth, carrying small personal items to keep close during their month-long stay in space.
“I have a little stuffed rabbit that belongs to my three-year-old daughter, and she actually has two of them because one was given as a gift,” Meyer, 48, said in an online news conference.
“So one will be here with him, and one will be with us, always having adventures, so we can send those pictures to my family over and over again,” he said.
US space agency NASA said SpaceX Crew-12 will take off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, to the orbiting scientific laboratory early Wednesday.
The mission will replace Crew-11, which returned to Earth in January, a month ahead of schedule, during the first medical evacuation in the space station’s history.
Meir, a marine biologist and physiologist, served as a flight engineer on a 2019-2020 mission to the space station and participated in the first all-female spacewalk.
Since then she gave birth to a daughter. She reflected on Sunday about the challenges of being a parent and the eight-month separation from her child.
“It makes it a lot harder to prepare to leave and think about being away from him for so long, especially when he’s so young, it’s a really big part of his life,” Meir said.
“But I hope that one day, he will really understand that this absence was a meaningful one, because it was an adventure that he shared and he will have memories of it, and hopefully it will inspire him and other people around the world,” Meir added.
When astronauts finally board the ISS, they will be among the last crew on board the football field-sized space station.
Living continuously for the past quarter century, the aging ISS will be pushed into Earth orbit before crashing into an isolated spot in the Pacific Ocean in 2030.
The other Crew-12 astronauts are NASA’s Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.
