SpaceX crew plays Rock Paper Scissors game to pass time before launch; watch

At 5:49 am EST on April 23, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule lifted off from Kennedy Launch Centre to take four astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). The team included two from NASA Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, a French astronaut Thomas Pesquet along with Japan’s Akihiko Hoshide. Now awaiting the astronauts’ arrival to the station, ISS took to Twitter to reveal how the team passed time before the capsule launch.

On April 24, the ISS posted a 23-second clip that showed the four astronauts playing Rock Paper Scissors to kill time before the lift-off. In the caption, the space station said that the team went through their steps ahead of the scheduled time and therefore to the extra time, they indulged themselves in the classic hand game.  “The crew is going through their steps ahead of schedule and are passing the extra time aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft with a couple of rounds of the game,” the wrote sharing the clip.

The video has now created a stir on the internet garnering over 380.4 thousand views along with hundreds of thousands of comments. “Thought it would be Rock-Paper-Scissors-Spock-Lizard ,” wrote a user. “Get them a brand new handheld Nintendo Gameboy SP, got to make it rechargeable,” added another. Meanwhile, many took the opportunity to talk about the skyrocketing prices of Dogecoin.

SpaceX's third crewed flight

The launch was accompanied by a smooth countdown from NASA experts, who along with SpaceX founder Elon Musk anxiously anticipated the completion of all stages of the private firm’s crewed mission. The whole mission dubbed Crew-2 marks the second operational mission under its Commercial Crew Programme which was launched with an aim to end the US’ decade-long dependence on Russian rockets. The first mission flew in May 2020 and carried Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley. 

The SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket are set to be launched from Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Florida and then dock on the ISS port. This will be Crew Dragon's second flight since last year when it had carried NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to and from the space station for the Demo-2 test flight. 

(Image Credits: Space Station/Twitter )