At three metres tall, Nasa’s Orion capsule is roomier than Apollo’s capsule and seats four astronauts instead of three, but for Monday’s test flight it will have a payload ranging from a mannequin named Helga to bits of Apollo 11’s engine and the odd stuffed toy.
For the flight, a full-sized dummy in an orange flight suit will occupy the commander’s seat, rigged with vibration and acceleration sensors. The “commander” was named Moonikin Campos in a public contest, in honour of Arturo Campos, a Nasa engineer who helped save Apollo 13 from disaster by working out how to jury-rig its partly crippled electrical system to bring the astronauts home.
Two other mannequins made of material simulating human tissue – heads and female torsos but no limbs – will measure cosmic radiation, one of the biggest risks of spaceflight. They are named Helga and Zohar. One torso is testing a protective vest from Israel.
Unlike the SLS rocket underneath it, Orion has launched before, making two laps around Earth in 2014. This time, the European Space Agency’s service module will be attached for propulsion and solar power via four wings.
Besides three test dummies, the flight carries a slew of deep-space research projects. Ten shoebox-size satellites will pop off once Orion is hurtling towards the moon.
These “cubesates” were installed in the rocket a year ago, and the batteries for half of them couldn’t be recharged as the launch kept getting delayed. Nasa expects some to fail, given their low-cost, high-risk nature. The radiation-measuring cubesats should be OK, along with a solar sail demonstration targeting an asteroid.
Orion will carry a few slivers of moon rocks collected by Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969, and a bolt from one of their rocket engines, salvaged from the sea a decade ago.
Aldrin isn’t attending the launch, according to Nasa, but three of his former colleagues will be there: Apollo 7’s Walter Cunningham, Apollo 10’s Tom Stafford and Apollo 17’s Harrison Schmitt, the next-to-last man to walk on the moon.
Snoopy plush toys are a Nasa institution, stemming from the name of the Apollo 10 lunar module that flew to the moon to test descent and landing procedures but never got to land itself.
A Snoopy toy went on the Columbia space shuttle, and this time the cartoon character will be accompanied by Shaun the Sheep, to recognise the involvement of the European Space Agency. Their official purpose is to demonstrate zero gravity, by floating around.
Orion will carry Biological Experiment-01 containing experiments on seeds, fungi, yeast and algae. Also on board is a voice recognition demonstration called Callisto, developed jointly by Amazon, Cisco Systems and Lockheed, that will test how Amazon’s Alexa works in a space capsule and how such a system might be used by future astronauts.
The dummy astronauts’ official “flight kit” includes thousands of other items, many of which will become “flown in space” mementos back on Earth. They include seeds that will be planted to become “moon trees”, a Dead Sea pebble, mission patches, stickers, USB drives and national flags. Some Lego has even made it onboard.
Artemis 1 mission in numbers
Launch site: Launchpad 39B, Nasa Kennedy complex, Florida
Launch date: 29 August 2022
Launch window: 8.33am-10.33am EDT (US east coast time)
Mission Duration: 42 days, 3 hours, 20 minutes
Destination: distant retrograde orbit around the Moon
Total mission distance: 1.3m miles (2.1m km)
Splashdown: Pacific Ocean, off the coast of San Diego
Maximum Return speed: 25,000 mph (40,000km/h)
Splashdown: 10 October 2022
With Associated Press
