Astronaut Kelly appears in Super Bowl ad for Amazon
With Super Bowl LIII set for today, the NFL spectacle’s much-scrutinized television commercials are being teased on social media — and retired astronaut Mark Kelly makes an appearance in one from Amazon.
Kelly, a potential 2020 Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Arizona and the husband of former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, and his twin brother, Scott, appear in a commercial highlighting the versatility of the Amazon Echo.
The Kelly brothers have both made multiple trips to the International Space Station for NASA.
The Super Bowl commercial touches on the “Amazon beta testing program,” in which the company encounters some glitches when they try to implement the Alexa digital assistant in various items, such as a toothbrush, dog collar, hot tub and even the International Space Station.
That’s where the Kelly brothers come in — they’re in the space station and they’re trying to use Alexa to control the power. Instead, theyre turning all the Earth’s power on and off.
Hollywood star Harrison Ford also appears in the ad. Ford and the Kelly brothers also are joined by actor and director Forest Whitaker and comedians Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer.
Mark Kelly married Giffords in 2007. Giffords, an Arizona Democrat who served in Congress from 2007 to 2012, was shot in the head and nearly killed in a Jan. 8, 2011, assassination attempt at a constituent event near Tucson. Today, Kelly is viewed as one of the top Democratic prospects to take on Sen. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., who will face voters in 2020.
Kelly and his brother also are known for being the focus of NASA’s Twins Study, in which Scott spent almost a year in the International Space Station and Mark stayed on Earth. Scientists studied how Scott’s body changed in space, compared to his brother’s back home.