NASA without a crew Artemis 1 mission, the first of Artemis program launched on November 16, 2022, carrying an assortment of intriguing cargo into lunar orbit.
From plushies to “torsos,” we take a look at the weirdest things heading to the moon and learn why some of them won’t return.
To stay up to date with the latest Artemis 1 news, check out our Artemis 1 Live Updates page.
Related: Artemis 1 Launch Photos: Unobstructed Views of NASA’s Moon Rocket Debut
“Callisto, take me to the moon”
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Amazon’s famed virtual assistant now has experience in space. Alexa has been in power for over a decade on Earth, controlling many types of devices, such as speakers, phones, and home appliances. And a tech demo on Artemis 1 called Callisto is based on Alexa’s prowess.
Callisto was designed to include Cisco’s Webex video conferencing software, integrating voice, video and artificial intelligence technology aboard the Orion spacecraft, which was built for NASA by Lockheed Martin. The technology “could be used in the future to allow astronauts to be more autonomous when exploring deep space,” said Lisa Callahan, vice president and general manager of commercial civilian space for Lockheed Martin, in a 2022 release exploring applications.
Who let the dogs out?
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In a throwback to the famous Apollo program, NASA officials let out a very special dog. Snoopy, a star of the Peanuts comics that ran from 1950 to 2000, is the zero-G indicator of the Orion spaceship. The famous beagle landed on the moon in a comic book series in 1969, and the Apollo 10 lunar module was named Snoopy in his honor.
The Artemis 1 Snoopy is in a spacesuit, wearing a replica of the same pressure suit NASA has for its Artemis astronauts. Its association with NASA dates back to 1968 when agency officials asked Peanuts creator Charles Schulz to use the image of the dog as a security mascot. NASA introduced the Silver Snoopy Award that year to honor members of the workforce who have made significant advancements in mission safety and the success of human spaceflight.
LEGO minifigures take a giant leap forward
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Four LEGO minifigures are aboard Orion, cosplaying the NASA astronauts, with a crew of six LEGO ground controllers supporting the group in space. The quartet includes characters ‘Kate’ and ‘Kyle’ from the LEGO Education SPIKE Prime system, as well as ‘Julia’ and ‘Sebastian’ from the LEGO City toy range.
All four figures are featured in the “Build to Launch: A STEAM Exploration Series” (opens in a new tab)“, which includes 10 weeks of digital space and science content on the LEGO Education website (opens in a new tab). Parents, educators, and students can use the figurines to learn about STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math).
Commander Moonikin Campos and company
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The name of a famous Apollo 13 engineer conveys the dynamic spirit of his lunar mission to the moon. NASA has opened a naming contest for a “moonikin” (a dummy bound for the moon, loaded with two radiation sensors). The winning entry was Arturo Campos, named after an engineer who played a key role in solving the problem of getting three people home safely from the moon after a series of critical glitches beset Apollo 13 in deep space.
Joining Campos are Helga and Zohar, two mannequin torsos from the German space agency (known by its German acronym DLR). Each of the DLR pairs is equipped with 5,600 sensors to measure radiation, and Zohar will wear an AstroRad radiation protection vest.
The three simulated astronauts will show how likely astronauts are to travel outside of the Van Allen radiation belts that shield Earth’s lower orbits from radiation. Astronauts are most vulnerable to cosmic rays from deep space as they reach high Earth orbit and beyond, but the risk is still quantified.
A lunar water hunter
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NASA is looking for water supplies to allow astronauts to continue on the lunar surface, which is where Lunar IceCube comes in. The cubesat is designed to search for water and other potential resources on the moon, to reduce the amount of gear astronauts need to ship from Earth (and save on cost and hassle.)
Its key instrument is able to search for ice and exospheric water vapor trails (trace of atmosphere). The Lunar IceCube team – led by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Morehead State University and the Busek Company – says the tiny cubesat will map resources for future explorers to view.
A giant leap for lamb
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In what has been dubbed a “giant leap for the lamb”, Shaun the sheep flies far beyond the borders of Shropshire for his eponymous UK children’s show. Shaun’s journey has been documented in a series of blog posts from the European Space Agency (ESA) (opens in a new tab)including one that showed the “training” of sheep on a parabolic plane.
Shaun, dressed in an ESA flight suit, headed into space for the 15th anniversary of his first TV series in 2007, although his first overall appearance was in 1995 in the short film “A Close Shave”. The television series has been seen in 180 countries. Shaun also stars in two feature films, the latest in 2019 starring a visitor from outer space in “A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon.”
Boldly go where no yeast has gone before
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Living organisms from Earth were tasked with the deepest space travel yet aboard a cubesat called Biosentinel, which is part of the Artemis 1 manifesto. (Biosentinel did not board Orion; he and nine other cubesats were packed into the upper stage of the SLS.) The effect of space radiation on yeast cells will be quantified in the cubesat’s orbit around the sun, which will be quite close to that of Earth.
Yeast cells, like human cells, carry genetic information in double strands of DNA. Cells are thus a model organism to better understand how radiation affects humans exposed to similar conditions.
“We hope we can extrapolate our resource to human biology and inform potential countermeasures for future missions,” lead scientist Sergio Santa Maria of NASA’s Ames Research Center told BioSentinel in August. 2022.
Dinky Lunar Lander
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A tiny nanolander is the only part of the Artemis 1 manifesto tasked with deliberately landing on the moon’s surface. It’s a small spacecraft, at just 2.2 pounds (1 kilogram), and is designed to fly to the moon after breaking away from a lunar-orbiting cubesat.
Called the Outstanding Lunar Exploration Technologies Demonstrated Semi-Hard Nano Impactor (OMOTENASHI), the landing technology leverages the experience gained by its manufacturer, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). During the Hayabusa2 mission, JAXA successfully deployed a series of landers to the asteroid Ryugu, which has lower gravity than the moon but similar dusty conditions.
A solar-powered asteroid hunter
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Another cubesat, NEA (Near-Earth Asteroid) Scout will use a solar sail to travel to a target asteroid. During its approximately two-year mission, NEA Scout will image the asteroid with NEACam, a 20-megapixel image sensor, to learn more about the asteroid’s rotation, shape, dust and position in space.
The image data will help future asteroid missions land and could also tell scientists more about the formation and evolution of these space rocks. Learning about asteroids is useful because they represent the remaining building blocks of the solar system early in its history, about 4.5 billion years ago before the formation of Earth and other planets.
A water-powered spacecraft
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The EQUilibriUm Lunar-Earth point 6U (EQUULEUS) spacecraft, another JAXA entry with the help of the University of Tokyo, is designed to explore radiation in an orbit between the Earth and the Moon. The cubesat has a new water propulsion system that allows it to minimize conventional fuel consumption.
Mission leaders collect data on the plasmasphere, which is the inner region of the magnetosphere. This area has a “cold” plasma, which refers to a gas with atoms devoid of electrons. It is a potentially useful radiation experiment and can also help plan low-energy lunar flybys on future missions.
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