Ridiculous History: 5 of NASA’s Greatest Pranks

On any successful space mission, the crew’s morale is at the top of the list of priorities. After all, the final frontier can be one high-stress workplace. So it’s no wonder that, in the 59 years since it was first established, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has seen a small army of passionate pranksters.

Now we’re not talking anything too serious of course. That could get dangerous on a NASA mission. These pranks are all relatively mild and silly, but still not necessarily what we’d expect from the crew of astronauts who were the first men to walk on the moon. But when your job consists of being launched into space at 17,500 miles per hour (28,000 kilometers per hour), sometimes a little comedy to go with the cosmos isn’t a bad thing.

A six-legged squatter caused a bit of unrest in the days leading up to NASA’s Apollo 12 mission. Following a test run at the Kennedy Space Center, a cockroach was seen hiding out in the command module that was to function as the crew’s living space. (It would also deliver them back to Earth after re-entering the atmosphere.) Not wanting any insect stowaways on the vessel, launch director Bob Sieck used all sorts of tricks to try to capture the intruder. But to the amusement of many, his quarry eluded him.

Apollo 12 took off on Nov. 14, 1969, with three astronauts on board, including Commander Charles “Pete” Conrad Jr. Five days later, Conrad became the third man to ever walk on the moon. During the journey home, Conrad took part in an in-flight, televised press conference. As the broadcast wound down, he held up a strip of white cardboard. On its surface stood a black, teardrop-shaped object with some faintly visible antennae.

Thinking this was the long-lost roach, one of Conrad’s colleagues at NASA said, “You found him, huh?”

“We sure did,” replied the astronaut. “He was in the food locker.”

“Is he fat?” asked the colleague.

“He’s very fat,” Conrad answered.

Alas, it was all a practical joke. Conrad later admitted that the roach he showed off was just a plastic toy he’d smuggled aboard. To this day, the real bug’s fate remains unknown.

That televised cockroach gag was small potatoes compared to another Apollo 12 prank. Conrad’s crewmates on this venture were module pilots Alan Bean and Richard F. Gordon Jr. Once they reached the moon, these astronauts had a long itinerary ahead of them. Part of their mission was to remove components from the Surveyor 3 probe, which landed in a crater back in 1967. Other objectives ranged from surveying the terrain to taking snapshots of sites that future crews might explore. All these tasks had to be completed in a specific order — and within some rigid time constraints.

To help the men stay on top of things, NASA tied spiral-bound wrist notebooks to the arms of their spacesuits. The notebooks had detailed instructions printed inside, along with a scientific glossary.

Something else was in there, too. On Nov. 19, Gordon was orbiting above the moon while Bean and Conrad busied themselves down on the surface. They were amused to discover little cartoons scrawled inside the wrist notebooks. And then, with a fateful page-flip, Bean suddenly found himself looking at the last thing he’d ever expect to see in outer space: a “Playboy” centerfold.

Unbeknownst to him, the Apollo 12 backup crew had printed a copy of Miss December 1969’s topless glamour shot into his wrist notebook. Beneath it, the caption read “Don’t forget — describe the protuberances.” And she wasn’t alone. Bean’s wrist book also featured Miss January 1969, too. Meanwhile, Conrad got two centerfold photos of his own.

Conrad and Bean were careful to avoid saying anything about the prank out loud, however. That’s because built-in spacesuit microphones were radioing their comments back to Earth. As Bean points out in hindsight, the humor probably would’ve been lost on America’s taxpayers.