Smokey Bear Goes to Space | WPN World People News

Smokey Bear has gone where no bear has gone before. On May 15, 2012, Smokey traveled aboard the Soyuz spacecraft with astronaut Joe Acaba and cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin to the International Space Station.

But Smokey Bear was not along just for the ride. As a recognized symbol for wildfire prevention, his presence on the orbiting complex also highlights the many areas of active space station research related to Earth observations, plant growth and combustion and materials sciences, as well as existing spinoff technologies in these areas.

Perhaps the clearest evidence of NASA’s unique role in the area of wildfires is the documentation and imagery of fire events from space. Throughout the space program, photos from space have provided a trove of insight into the spread and behavior of wildfires. That valuable perspective continues with the Crew Earth Observations program, in which astronauts onboard the station capture imagery in support of research in a wide variety of Earth Science subdisciplines.

Source: NASA