Nutella jumps on the best product placement money can’t buy: A trip to the far side of the Moon

Between faulty Outlook headaches and a toilet on the fritz that releases … well, gas into the air, the astronauts aboard NASA’s Artemis II mission may be feeling as if they’re spread a little thin, but that hasn’t stopped them from having a little sweet treat—and creating possibly the world’s best free advertisement in the process. 

On April 6, commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen, the four astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft, became the farthest humans from Earth since Apollo 13. They broke a 56-year-old distance record; flew behind the far side of the Moon in a total communications blackout; and witnessed a solar eclipse from lunar orbit. 

And less than four minutes before any of that history happened, a jar of Nutella stole the entire livestream.

During the livestream with a countdown of three minutes and 52 seconds before the Artemis II mission broke the Apollo 13 record, a tub of the chocolate-hazelnut spread drifted out of the Orion spacecraft’s kitchen area, rotated lazily in the cabin...