'Best Man' in Space! Astronaut Brings Friends' Wedding Rings to Space Station

Wedding rings on the ISS
Astronaut Thomas Pesquet brought these wedding rings along for his six-month stay at the International Space Station. (Image credit: Thomas Pesquet/ESA/NASA)

Talk about a best man!

French astronaut Thomas Pesquet brought along some very special cargo for his six-month stay at the International Space Station: a shiny, silver pair of wedding rings.

These rings aren't meant for Pesquet or his love interest. Instead, the rings belong to two of his Earth-bound friends, who will use them to get married after Pesquet returns from space. [See more space photos by astronaut Thomas Pesquet

"In my 1.5 kg 'hand luggage', I brought the wedding rings of my friends getting married this summer!" Pesquet wrote on Twitter and Flickr. "I'll be back in time to be their witness."

From the engraving inside the larger ring, it looks like his friends will tie the knot on Aug. 14. With Pesquet's return to Earth slated for June, that leaves the astronaut plenty of wiggle room to get the rings back to their rightful owners in time for the big day.  

"Wedding rings from space, now that's a grand romantic gesture," Pesquet wrote in a subsequent Twitter post, where he attached the song "Magnificent Romeo" by Basement Jaxx. 

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Pesquet, a flight engineer and first-time space flyer, arrived at the International Space Station in November, along with NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy. 

Though Pesquet isn't married, he does have a girlfriend who works at the United Nations in Rome, France 24 reports

After caring for his friends' wedding rings in space for six months, we bet he's planning a toast that is truly out of this world!

Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her @hannekescience. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

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Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos.