‘Sparkly’ narwhal toy trades the sea for space as a Boeing Starliner zero-g indicator

– What has one horn, two crew members and shares a name with its ride to orbit?

“Calypso,” the sequined plush narwhal flying with NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams during the crew flight test (CFT) of “Calypso,” Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner commercial spacecraft. It is a toy version of the deepest diving marine mammal and will soon be the highest flying example of its kind, while also serving as the crew’s ‘zero-g indicator’.

“My zero-g indicator happens to be a very sparkly narwhal whose name is ‘Calypso,’” Williams said in a prelaunch interview with collectSPACE. “I’m excited for this little guy.”

Like previous zero-g indicators, ‘Calypso’, the doll, will begin to float as ‘Calypso’, the capsule, reaches orbit, signaling to Wilmore and Williams that they are in the microgravity environment of space entered and are on their way to orbit around the Earth. docking with the International Space Station.

Williams said the narwhal reflects her and Wilmore’s excitement to fly on this long-awaited mission. Their test flight will pave the way for operational Starliner flights to rotate crews to and from the space station for NASA.

“A narwhal is one of those things that looks like the sister or brother of a unicorn. Is it really real? Is it really happening?” Williams said. “Yes, it’s really real. And it’s really happening.”

Narwhals are indeed real. Found in the icy waters of the Arctic, they are medium-sized whales that are typically spotted with brown and black markings. Male narwhals grow a canine tooth into a single tusk that can extend as far as 10 feet from their jaw.

Williams’ niece and nephew chose the narwhal puppet to fly on Starliner.

“I gave them a few options, as long as it was something from the sea,” Williams said.

The underwater theme comes from Williams’ personal love of the ocean. As a test pilot in the Navy, she tapped into the same interest five years ago when she was given the honor of naming her then-future spacecraft. She chose “Calypso” as a tribute to oceanographer Jacques Cousteau and his research vessel of the same name.

“Cousteau had this amazing ship, did amazing explorations around the world and opened the eyes of so many people to learn about the ocean and I think that’s what the spacecraft will do,” she said in a statement released by Boeing.

That ‘Calypso’, the narwhal, and ‘Calypso’, the capsule, share the same name was purely coincidental. The doll was so named by its manufacturer, Ty (of Beanie Babies fame), when it went up for sale in 2019, long before Williams’ niece and nephew started looking for their aunt’s zero-g indicator.

“It was the right narwhal,” Williams told collectSPACE.

Zero-g indicators are a tradition dating back to the first human spaceflight, when cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin took a small dummy with him to watch it float in 1961. The practice remained an exclusively Russian activity until 2019, when SpaceX borrowed the idea for its crews to launch to the International Space Station on Dragon spacecraft.

NASA later followed suit, flying its first zero-g indicator on Artemis I, its unmanned mission around the moon in 2022.

Boeing also flew toys on Starliner’s first two unmanned flights. A spacesuit-clad astronaut Snoopy and an alien from the Kerbal Space Program “Jeb” were launched on the spacecraft’s orbital flight test (OFT) in 2019 and on OFT-2 in 2022, respectively.

Boeing unveiled “Calypso,” the narwhal, during the live webcast of the countdown to the CFT launch, as live video from the capsule on this test flight will not be available until Wilmore and Williams reach the space station. Williams said she enjoyed having children tune in to try to spot the rainbow sequined doll.

“I think it’s great that kids would do a treasure hunt to find it,” Williams said. “Hopefully when it is unveiled it will be something impressive, a bit sparkly and a bit fun.”