Space Station Visitors Greeted With Wild Sight When They Open Hatch

After docking with the International Space Station, the latest crew visiting the orbital outpost were met with a startling sight.

Specifically, Russian cosmonaut Ivan Vagner greeted them while wearing a cartoonish alien mask. Footage shows Vagner pushing himself into the docking portion wearing the costume.

He then can be seen haunting the premises while crew members are preparing to deboard the new visitors.

A NASA spokesperson confirmed to Futurism that Vagner "wore it down at the hatch so it would be the first thing the Crew-10 crew saw when the hatch opened."

"It’s really just like it appeared to be, a quick prank," the spokesperson added.

All told, it sounds like a moment of levity — assuming he didn't scare any of the incoming astronauts too badly — to punctuate an otherwise lengthy and meticulous docking procedure.

It's a particularly long-awaited mission. Fellow ISS crew members and NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have been waiting for this moment since last summer, with the pair stranded on board the ISS since June due to major technical issues plaguing Boeing's Starliner spacecraft that brought them there. (The pair have now departed the station and are headed back to Earth.)

The hijinx are reminiscent of the time NASA astronaut Mark Kelly attempted to send a full-body gorilla suit to his identical twin brother Scott, who was stationed on board the ISS at the time.

The first suit exploded after the SpaceX mission to deliver it to the station blew up in June 2015. A second attempt in February 2016 proved more successful, and a now-iconic video shows Scott Kelly dressing up in the suit and hiding on board the station before popping out to terrify his compatriots.

"Of course people liked it," Kelly told People magazine in 2022. "How can you not like space gorilla?"

More on the mission: NASA Sending Military Personnel to Space Station