NASA astronaut smuggles gorilla suit into ISS to prank crew member, watch his reaction

Living and working in space, as exciting as it sounds, could be frightening considering the uncountable risks that astronauts face all around the clock. In order to cope with the stress and calm their nerves, the residents of the International Space Station (ISS) often resort to fun activities, humour being an important part of it. This was proved in a 2016 incident when former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly smuggled a gorilla suit into the space station and played a prank on his teammate. The viral video is making rounds on Twitter yet again and Kelly's teammate's reaction is leaving people in splits. 

The video above shows Kelly emerging from a big, white package and floating toward the module on the other side and scare a crew member, British astronaut Tim Peake. The sped-up clip shows Peake floating in zero-gravity to get away from the 'space gorilla'.

How did gorilla suit end up aboard the ISS?

According to an interview with People magazine, Kelly said that the suit was sent as a surprise to him by his brother Mark Kelly, also a former NASA astronaut. Since the he was about to spend almost a year in space (2015-16), Kelly's brother thought this would lighten things up in space. 

According to People, the suit was first vacuum packed aboard a SpaceX rocket in 2015, but the cargo mission was unsuccessful as the rocket exploded just a couple of minutes after launch. However, Kelly's brother promised to send him another suit and this time he delivered. The astronaut obviously did not tell anyone and surprised Peake, a video of which has gone viral whenever it surfaced. "Space gorilla making a comeback today on twitter," Kelly tweeted sharing the clip. So far, the video has garnered over 8,54,000 views just a day after it was uploaded on February 17.