Actors Kelly Marie Tran and Naomi Ackie team up with NASA astronauts Megan McArthur and Jessica Watkins for training.
NASA
Star Wars has inspired kids to become future NASA astronauts, and now it seems NASA is influencing Star Wars actors to train as astronauts.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker actors Kelly Marie Tran (Rose Tico) and Naomi Ackie (Jannah) traveled to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to train like real-life astronauts preparing for missions to the space station, the moon and Mars.
In a new NASA video posted on Jan. 21, the actors show off their December trip to the space center where they visited NASA Expedition 61 crew members living and working aboard the orbiting laboratory.
The video shows Tran and Ackie training like astronauts in the NASA Space Vehicle Mockup Facility. They meet up with NASA astronauts Megan McArthur and Jessica Watkins, who taught them all about the gravity offload system in the Orion crew capsule.
One of the highlights of the video is watching Tran pretend to use the Force on Ackie as she’s lifted off the ground via the gravity offload system to simulate weightlessness in space.
The Star Wars actors also learn more about what it’s like for astronauts to sleep aboard the International Space Station; what it’s like to work at Mission Control; how it feels to wear NASA spacesuits and what astronaut space food tastes like.
Apparently, the new butternut squash and Brussels sprouts dishes are very tasty.
They also got a lesson in how to drive the lunar rover, which astronauts will use to explore the terrain to collect samples for various testing.
NASA shared with the actors more about its upcoming Artemis program — a new lunar exploration program, which includes sending the first woman and the next man on the moon by 2024.