The European Space Agency yesterday, was in midst of launching a massive Ariane 5 rocket that was carrying the JUICE spacecraft, which is destined for Jupiter’s moons, into orbit from the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana.
To capture this historic launch, the cameras zoomed in on the scene, only to be surprised by a cute yet adorable little sloth in the foreground.
The sloth quickly became viral as people found it amusing that the sloth had come to pay the rocket a visit. Since the rocket was about to take off, the sloth came to share its final goodbyes.
People all over social media called the cute and lively sloth, “The Star” of the rocket launch.
“Aside from the actual launch, this guy is definitely the star of ESA’s JUICE telecast,” Quantum Magazine’s Nadia Drake tweeted.
“Although we were focusing on a certain rocket and spacecraft, we tend to agree,” the ESA replied, adding a wink emoji for emphasis.
Before the launch, however, the sloth was taken and moved to a safe location as a rocket launch produces a lot of heat that could harm anything in its vicinity.
It was certainly a query as to how the sloth had traveled so far from its natural tree habitat as they don’t tend to move much. Regardless of how cute the mammal might look; they can bite and scratch to defend themselves in situations where they feel threatened and hence, they should be approached only with caution.
Their greatest enemy right now is growing deforestation which is the reason why two of the six species of sloths are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s red list of endangered species.