Having parents who travel for work a lot is tough on a kid. It’s especially hard, presumably, when your dad’s job takes him to outer space.
In a four-minute video released this week, the thirteen-year-old daughter of one of two American astronauts stationed aboard the International Space Station in January managed to convey just how much she missed her dad. With the help of Hyundai (is there anything brands can’t do?), teenage Houston resident Steph—whose last name was not included in the spot, but if you’re curious about which one her dad is, you can figure out with a little Googling—managed to send him a note in her own handwriting that he could see all the way from space.
Hyundai tapped a small fleet of its luxury Genesises (Genesi?) and brought them to the Delmar Dry Lake in Nevada—one of the more remarkable deserts in the United States—to drive in v formation through the dry ground to leave tracks spelling “Steph ❤️’s You!” in letters large enough (the entire message is over two square miles) that they could be seen even aboard the ISS.
The video is charming—Steph talks frankly about the challenges of having a dad whose job is both so far away and so important—and she’s open about her hopes for the message in a way that only a young teenager can be. “It might make him miss us even more,” she says. “And miss Earth.” Having a dad whose job is not on the same planet as you is a rare situation, but Steph makes it seem downright relatable. Plus the car company got to set a Guiness Book record for “largest tire-track image,” so everybody wins here.
