World beloved Aardman character Shaun the Sheep is set of an all new adventure, having been named as the European Space Agency’s first astronaut to participate in Nasa’s Artemis Moon program.

ESA announced Shaun’s addition to the astronaut Corps Monday morning, potentially less than 30 days from the launch of Artemis I, Nasa’s first test flight of the US space agency’s Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft.

“This is an exciting time for Shaun and for us at ESA,” ESA Director for Human and Robotic Exploration David Parker said in a statement. “We’re woolly very happy that he’s been selected for the mission and we understand that, although it might be a small step for a human, it’s a giant leap for lambkind.”

It won’t be Shaun’s first experience with space travel, as ESA notes a space agency team supervised the sheep’s playing the role of an astronaut in the 2019 film “A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon.”

“It offered insight into the rigorous training that all astronauts undertake to prepare for spaceflight,” ESA announced in a statement, “which he will now experience for real.”

Artemis I consists of Nasa’s 322-foot-tall heavy-lift Moon rocket and the Orion Spacecraft, which Nasa hopes will lift off from launch complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center as early as 29 August, with back up launch windows on 2 September and 5 September. The mission will send Orion — and Shaun — on a course looping around and beyond the Moon before returning to Earth to splash down in the ocean after 39 to 42 days in space, depending on the launch date the mission actually blasts off.

“The spacecraft will perform a flyby of the Moon, using lunar gravity to gain speed and propel itself 70 000 km beyond the Moon, almost half a million km from Earth,” and ESA statement read, “farther than any human, or sheep, has ever travelled.”

But Shaun won’t fly solo in the Orion Spacecraft . He will join Nasa’s data-gathering “Moonikins,” Arturo Campus, a data gathering mannequin named after an electrical engineer that helped bring Apollo 13 home in 1970, as well as Helga and Zohar.

These being humanoid mannequins, however, Shaun’s flight will still break new ground despite his having company on the journey.

“Lucy Wendover, Marketing Director at Aardman says, “Aardman is excited to be joining ESA in making history by launching the first ‘sheep’ into space,” Aardman marketing director Lucy Wendover said in a statement. “2022 marks the 15th anniversary of Shaun’s first TV series, so what better way to celebrate than by travelling farther than any sheep has gone before.”

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