The first astronauts preparing to fly to the moon in more than 50 years want your help identifying their fifth crew member — their "moon mascot."
NASA's Artemis 2 crew is seeking an original idea for their zero-g indicator (ZGI), a stuffed toy or doll that will be suspended from a tether in their Orion spacecraft to signal when they enter the microgravity environment of space. The Artemis II mission, which is targeted to launch no sooner than late 2026, will swing the crew around the moon and then return them to Earth.
Mission commander Reid Wiseman and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen revealed the contest during a talk at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas. (Victor Glover, the mission's pilot, had to be at Johnson Space Center in Houston to help select the next class of NASA astronaut candidates.)
"I can't stress enough how much this thing becomes the mascot of your crew, because it's the only thing allowed in the cabin that's not been hardware-certified or designed by the Orion engineers, and it's the coolest thing ever," said Koch on Friday (March 7). "It starts floating when you're in space, and as we're all still strapped in our seats, there's really nothing else to show that you are actually in space for the in-cabin camera views except your zero-gravity indicator that is floating around."
"So these are a really cool part of our missions, and we really didn't want any of those friction points trying to figure out what we were going to have," said Koch. "So we are putting this contest out to you all. We would love it if someone in this audience, but actually anyone from around the world, can enter into this contest and hopefully design what's going to go around the moon in our capsule with us."
