NASA’s Super Guppy is definitely one of the most peculiar aircraft in the world.
The wide-bodied cargo aircraft is used by NASA to transport large rocket components.
Even the interior of the aircraft is quite different from any other cargo plane in the world.
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Although it may look large, NASA’s Super Guppy is not even close to the largest aircraft in the world.
That title still belongs to the Antonov An-124, the largest military plane in the world.
Then there’s the Airbus 380, the largest commercial plane in the world that dwarfs ordinary jets.
The Super Guppy’s predecessor the Pregnant Guppy also played a major role in the Apollo missions.
With the space race in full swing, NASA needed to transport rocket and satellite parts, which could take weeks by cargo ships.
Those were weeks that NASA couldn’t afford if they wanted to land the first man on the moon.
So, they built the Pregnant Guppy to help transport the Saturn rocket for the Apollo program.
These days, the Super Guppy is still helping NASA with the new age of space exploration.
It recently also delivered the heat shield skin for the Artemis mission.
The Air Force and the Navy also use the aircraft to deliver oversized cargo.
Back in 1962, air traffic controllers were so doubtful that the aircraft would make it off the ground, they notified police and fire departments to be on alert.
Thankfully, the Super Guppy proved them wrong.
It paved the way for aircraft like Airbus Beluga, Boeing Dreamlifter, and Antonov AN-225: some of the biggest aircraft in the world designed to carry extremely large cargo.
Although only one Super Guppy remains in service with NASA, it is still quite a useful tool in transporting large spacecraft components.
