Barbie has been an astronaut since 1965, decades before anyone actually let her near a rocket. That changed in 2022 when Mattel sent two real Barbie dolls to the International Space Station. The dolls spent several months orbiting the Earth as part of Mission DreamStar, a project built with the International Space Station National Laboratory, according to Mattel's official announcement. Mattel has said the goal of the project was to show girls that a career in space isn't just something that happens in the movies.
How two dolls ended up in orbit
