Astronaut Anne McClain Loves Aidy Bryant's Take on Her on 'Saturday Night Live'

By Tariq Malik
published

Astronaut Anne McClain may have missed out on a historic all-female spacewalk last week, when spacesuit-sizing issues prevented her from working with crewmate Christina Koch outside the International Space Station. But it looks like she can already laugh at the experience. 

One day after the spacewalk on Friday (March 29), with NASA astronaut Nick Hague replacing McClain, "Saturday Night Live" ran a Weekend Update with comedian Aidy Bryant portraying a visibly disappointed McClain still trying to stay upbeat and toe the NASA line. 

"I'm not mad, you know. They can make a special spacesuit for a dog, or a special spacesuit for a monkey," Bryant, clad in a blue astronaut jumpsuit, says as McClain. "But a human girl, only one gets to be moon queen. And so, yeah. I'm actually happy...as...hell."

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NASA replaced McClain with Hague on Friday's spacewalk because only one medium-size spacesuit was ready for the event. McClain wore the medium-size in a March 22 spacewalk with Hague, with Koch donning the suit on Friday. 

"To all the little girls out there, I just want to say: You can all become astronauts, just not at the same time," Bryant adds. 

McClain, who has said it was her decision to swap places on the spacewalk, apparently enjoyed Bryant's take on her. 

"I am still laughing about this," McClain wrote on Twitter today (April 1). "And Aidy, your uniform looks impeccable!"

McClain is now scheduled to venture outside the space station on Monday (April 8) with crewmate David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency. It will be her second spacewalk after the March 22 outing with Hague. All three spacewalks are aimed at replacing batteries for the space station's solar arrays. 

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Tariq Malik
Tariq Malik
Editor-in-Chief

Tariq is the Editor-in-Chief of Space.com and joined the team in 2001, first as an intern and staff writer, and later as an editor. He covers human spaceflight, exploration and space science, as well as skywatching and entertainment. He became Space.com's Managing Editor in 2009 and Editor-in-Chief in 2019. Before joining Space.com, Tariq was a staff reporter for The Los Angeles Times covering education and city beats in La Habra, Fullerton and Huntington Beach. In October 2022, Tariq received the Harry Kolcum Award for excellence in space reporting from the National Space Club Florida Committee. He is also an Eagle Scout (yes, he has the Space Exploration merit badge) and went to Space Camp four times as a kid and a fifth time as an adult. He has journalism degrees from the University of Southern California and New York University. You can find Tariq at Space.com and as the co-host to the This Week In Space podcast with space historian Rod Pyle on the TWiT network. To see his latest project, you can follow Tariq on Twitter @tariqjmalik.