( CNN ) -- Call it one small step for a cheese , one giant leap fromage-kind . A wheel of Le Brouere cheese was the secret cargo aboard the SpaceX Dragon , the first commercial spacecraft to be recovered from Earth orbit , the company revealed Thursday . SpaceX co-founder Elon Musk hinted at the cargo after the capsule 's successful splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on Wednesday afternoon , suggesting it had something to do with the British comedy troupe Monty Python . The block of fermented curd was a nod to one of the group 's best-known sketches , `` Cheese Shop . '' The wheel , described only as `` very big , '' was being towed back to California aboard a barge along with the spacecraft and `` basking in the glow of being the first cheese to travel to orbit on a commercial spacecraft , '' company spokeswoman Kirstin Brost told CNN . In another comedy reference , the payload was bolted to the floor of SpaceX 's Dragon 9 spacecraft in a circular drum bearing a picture of a cow and the warning `` Top Secret ! '' -- a nod to the 1984 spoof by the creators of `` Airplane ! '' The Dragon was launched into low-Earth orbit on Wednesday from Florida 's Kennedy Space Center and splashed down about 500 miles off the coast of Southern California about three hours later . It was the first flight under NASA 's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program , which aims to develop commercial supply services to the international space station . CNN 's Rich Phillips contributed to this report .
A wheel of Le Brouere cheese was the secret cargo aboard the SpaceX Dragon . The secret cargo was a nod to a Monty Python sketch , SpaceX 's co-founder said . Capsule was first commercial spacecraft to be recovered from Earth orbit .