Meet the world’s newest non-human astronaut
<p>Finally the world is sending a sloth in a spacesuit to the moon… well kind of.</p>
<p>Lunar Mission One (LMO), a commercial space project, is planning to launch an unmanned mission to the moon in 2017 and intends to leave a time capsule providing an extensive record of human life.</p>
<p>In a move that will surely provide a great deal of confusion aliens from the future, a picture of a sloth wearing a spacesuit is going to be included as a part of this record. </p>
<p><img width="500" height="638" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/10372/astronaut-sloth_500x638.jpg" alt="Astronaut Sloth" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"/></p>
<p><em>Image credit: Tumblr / Pedro Dionisio</em></p>
<p>The picture, a famous internet meme created by Portuguese graphic designer Pedro Dionísio, was selected by online community Reddit to be part of the package LMO will be leaving on the moon.</p>
<p>The image of the sloth in the spacesuit has taken the internet by storm, but is the product of Mr Dionísio figuring out how to crop animal heads on different bodies. Mr Dionísio had intended to throw the image out, but his girlfriend thought the picture was funny and posted it online.</p>
<p>From there the image of the astronaut sloth took the internet by storm.</p>
<p>Mr Dionísio was somewhat surprised when he was contacted by <em>The Washington Post</em> about the decision to send a picture of an astronaut sloth to space, saying, “That's crazy, this is news to me. I've been spending the last 24 hours ... thinking about how I'm going to write this into my portfolio.”</p>
