What Aleš Svoboda will take to the ISS: hedgehog, puck, linden

At a presentation at Planetarium Prague, organizers showed the items that Czech astronaut Aleš Svoboda will take to the ISS. They include a flag, linden seeds, an excerpt from Čapek's play “R.U.R.”, a hockey puck and a plush lion cub in a miniature suit made from Svoboda's own flight suit. The list is not yet final, and the mission is planned for the summer of 2027 at the earliest.

The items were presented at the opening of the Czech Space Week 2026 festival. The public call received 1171 responses in a month, which produced 320 specific suggestions. A seven-member panel made the selection, with representatives of the ministries, the Academy of Sciences, the Prague planetarium, the Brno observatory and planetarium, and Svoboda himself. Some of the items were suggested by the ministries and the astronaut.

A lion, flags and crystal

The first three items were presented by Minister of Industry and Trade Karel Havlíček. The orbit will see the Czech national flag, the flags of all fourteen regions and twenty-seven statutory cities, a lion printed on a 3D printer, and a brooch from the “Crystal Valley” that combines Czech glass, crystal, costume jewelry, Czech garnet and moldavite. After the flight the brooch will go back to the Liberec Region. “We want to involve young people and children. When Vladimír Remek flew, all of Czechoslovakia lived by it,” the minister recalled.

Seeds, Čapek and a crystal

Education Minister Robert Plaga presented three groups of items. The first is seeds of the small-leaved linden, the national tree of Czechia: after the mission, saplings will be planted near schools and in communities. The second is part of Karel Čapek's drama “R.U.R.”, where the word “robot” first appeared. The minister admitted that he wanted to send his favorite children's book, “About the Little Airplane Kaneti”, into space, but the proposal did not pass.

The third is a crystal cube just two by two centimeters in size. It holds the complete blueprints of the Kostka student satellite of the Brno University of Technology, applied by electron lithography. The item is tied to the educational project “The Universe in a Cube”. Plaga added that about 250 billion neutrinos pass through the cube every second, and joked about the ministry's 2027 budget.

Personal items and a tram ticket without a stowaway

Svoboda showed three personal items: the pilot's wings he received while serving in the Czech Air Force, a T-shirt with Czech military aviation motifs that will be sewn from a material developed at NASA, and a hockey puck from Vsetín. Hockey taught him teamwork, discipline and quick decisions. He also presented the Ministry of Defense items: the Air Force flag, a sleeve patch and a plush two-tailed lion cub.

From the public's suggestions, the panel chose the “hedgehog in a cage” puzzle from Jaroslav Foglar's stories, a plush robot Kit from the children's series Kosmix, and a part from the Merkur construction set, from which Otto Wichterle built in December 1961 the device for making soft contact lenses. Jiří Dušek, director of the Brno observatory, added a 3D copy of the Venus of Věstonice, which is almost thirty thousand years old, and a special ticket for the Brno “shalina” tram: so that Svoboda does not ride to the ISS as a stowaway, he will get tickets for the number of orbits around Earth, each lasting about ninety minutes. The participation of Jára Cimrman on the list is still being discussed with the rights holders.

What's next

The items face technical checks by the European Space Agency, NASA and Vast, and the final selection will depend on the mass and volume of the spacecraft. Besides the symbols, Svoboda will do science: thirteen Czech experiments, chosen from seventy proposals, are being prepared. He will be the pilot of the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, and the crew will spend about two weeks on the ISS. After the return the items will remain state property and go to museums, libraries and other institutions.

In 2022 Svoboda became one of seventeen people who passed the European Space Agency's selection, for which more than 22 500 people applied. You can follow the preparations at ceskacestadovesmiru.cz.

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Around Prague, based on reporting by prazsky.denik.cz