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The interesting question What living organisms adapt to 0 gravity? includes several GIF images. One if them is shown below, that of (apparently) a dog in a NASA suit floating around in the ISS's Japanese Experiment Module (JEM), nicknamed Kibo.

It is reminiscent of this GIF shown in Can you swim in space?

Whaaaaa??? ;-)

enter image description here

uhoh
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1 Answers1

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No dog was ever on the ISS. This is from an advert of a Japanese cell phone provider called SoftBank. Here's the full video:

The ad is part of a series. This episode is called "父と交信" or (Communicating with Dad; 父/dad being the dogs name). I found no hint that the production was in any way extraordinary.

It appears to be filmed on a green screen background. My guess is that the body is a puppet and the head was later composed in. For the paddling shot, it may be that the space suit hides a harness that the dog was kept in. From walking a dog in a harness once I remember that if you lift it up by the harness and keep it close to the ground it may do the dog paddling shown.

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
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    Now I'm going to spend the rest of the day watching Japanese TV commercials. Favorite so far: https://youtu.be/lDUOmY80GhU – uhoh Apr 29 '18 at 06:08
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    "No dog was ever on the ISS" The crew of STS-88 would disagree! Woof! https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/e4AAAOSwNSxVQrGk/s-l300.jpg – Organic Marble Apr 29 '18 at 14:17
  • Wait, is this the same SoftBank as had some (public? leaked?) PowerPoint on business strategy that looks like something out of Neon Genesis Evangelion? – ikrase May 23 '20 at 01:52
  • @ikrase The very same. They are terrible. Regular cell phone contracts in Japan are extremely overpriced, and all that money gets sunken into completely batshit insane silicon valley business ventures. – Rikki-Tikki-Tavi May 26 '20 at 13:07