“Wheatley,” an orb-shaped robot pal in Valve Software’s popular 2011 game Portal 2, is on his way to space. The unauthorized stowaway is on a Japanese spacecraft now in Earth orbit, heading to the the International Space Station (ISS).
[Wheatley] is flying aboard the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA’s) H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) that launched on Friday (July 20) to resupply the space station. The character, in miniature two-dimensional (2-D) form, is soaring through real space thanks to an unnamed NASA worker. Valve announced on its website’s blog that “thanks to an anonymous tech at NASA, Wheatley is actually going to actual space.”
The one-eyed sphere, or “personality core” as referred to in the video game, is given its voice by English actor and comedian Stephen Merchant. On board the HTV, which is nicknamed “Kounotori or “white stork”, the robot’s voice is offered in the form of a phrase engraved under Wheatley’s likeness — “In spaaaaaaace!”
(Portal 2 players may associate that quote with another of the game’s personality cores, the so-called “Space Core,” though Valve attributes it to Wheatley on their blog.)
Photo: this image posted on Valve’s website shows “what appears to be a circuit board with Wheatley’s likeness laser-inscribed in one corner,” according to Pearlman. We don’t know the scale of the component, or the instrument it’s part of.