The astronauts on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon launch have named their ship. (But they’re not telling … yet.) – Space.com Space Saturdays May 23, 2020

I saw this article today on Space.com – The astronauts on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon launch have named their ship. (But they’re not telling … yet.): https://www.space.com/astronauts-spacex-crew-dragon-capsule-demo-2-name-mystery.html. Thought this was a mysterious choice for this week’s Space Saturdays post. Going to be fun to learn what they named it. My vote is Dragon Egg. After all, it looks like a dragon egg.

By Chelsea Gohd 4 hours ago (May 23, 2020)

But they aren’t telling … yet.

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The NASA astronauts set out to launch next week aboard  SpaceX‘s Crew Dragon capsule have named their vehicle. But, alas, we’ll have to wait til launch day for the big reveal.

On Friday (May 22) in a virtual conference hosted from the astronaut crew quarters at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, veteran NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken revealed that they named the capsule they’ll be flying to the International Space Station as part of SpaceX’s Demo-2 launch.

Naming a spacecraft is not a new custom. In fact, it is part of a longstanding tradition that stems all the way back to NASA’s Gemini and Mercury missions. In the mid-20th century, for example, Gemini astronauts named Gemini 3 “Molly Brown,” in reference to a Broadway musical.

Related: NASA astronauts start traditions before first SpaceX launch
In photos: SpaceX’s Demo-2 Crew Dragon test flight with astronauts

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