A Shiba Inu plush toy that once floated inside SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn spacecraft has become the unlikely catalyst for a sharp rally in the $ASTEROID memecoin.
The token, launched on Ethereum with a parallel version on Solana, surged past a $28 million market cap on Friday, marking a new all-time high. Its trading volume spiked to above $33 million in 24 hours as buyers piled in, with some early positions recording triple- and quadruple-digit gains.
Data from Dexscreener shows that ASTEROID is currently trading at $0.00006464—surging by staggering several hundred million percent in the past 24 hours. Notably, the pump comes months after its launch, as the meme coin is now freshly launched, it has an age of 1 year 7 months.
Why is the ASTEROID token pumping?
The narrative driving the pump in the $ASTEROID token centers on the real-world story behind the token’s namesake. Asteroid, a custom Shiba Inu zero-gravity indicator, flew aboard the Polaris Dawn mission in September 2024.
The plush was created after the mission team invited 15-year-old space enthusiast Liv Perrotto to design the object that would reveal weightlessness to the crew. Liv, who had battled pediatric cancer and drew inspiration from Elon Musk’s own Shiba Inu, Floki, sketched Asteroid in about 30 minutes.
The team brought her exact vision to life as the official zero-g indicator. Proceeds from official Asteroid plush sales supported St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Tragically, Liv passed away earlier this year at age 15 after her cancer returned. In recent days, the story gained fresh momentum when her mother shared a list of questions Liv had prepared for Musk. The final one asked whether he would make Asteroid the official mascot for SpaceX. Glenn Beck highlighted the list on his show, and Musk replied “Will answer shortly” to the post.
That brief response lit the fuse in crypto circles, where narrative often outweighs fundamentals.
The emotional combination—a young designer’s space dream realized aboard a real SpaceX mission, charity ties, and now Musk’s direct engagement—has fueled rapid buying pressure across both the Ethereum and Solana versions of $ASTEROID.
Memecoins like this thrive on viral storytelling, and few carry the layered human and spaceflight connection this one does.
Whale moves fuel $ASTEROID frenzy
As of now, majority of the chatter around ASTEROID is fueled after standout on-chain plays on mene coin, which have amplified the excitement around its price surge.
Among one of the wallets is an anonymous Ethereum whale who demonstrated extreme patience. The wallet 0x9810 acquired 8.02 billion $ASTEROID tokens during its launch days in September 2024, spending just 9.1 ETH—roughly $21,600 at the time.
As highlighted by Lookonchain on X, their position endured more than 580 days of brutal volatility, at times hovering near zero value. Following Elon Musk’s reply, the Ethereum version of $ASTEROID pushed the holder’s bag briefly over $392,000, delivering an unrealized profit of around $370,000—as of latest market data.
In contrast, another trader showcased lightning-fast timing. Wallet 0x680 swapped roughly 1 ETH for $ASTEROID shortly after spotting Elon Musk’s comment. Within three hours, that single move generated a profit of $474,320 as the token pumped aggressively in low-liquidity conditions.
While the very first buyer of the day only managed a modest 2x before exiting, this swift entrant captured one of the session’s largest gains by holding through the initial spike.
Both these wallets rode the same Polaris Dawn Shiba Inu story and Musk’s engagement, yet their vastly different timelines delivered outsized results in a single volatile session. As always in this sector, such gains remain highly speculative and can reverse rapidly.
Whether the momentum holds will likely hinge on any further updates from Musk and the broader risk appetite in the memecoin sector. For now, the $ASTEROID token has turned a piece of spaceflight history into one of the day’s most talked-about pumps in crypto.
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