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Artemis I Moon Mission Dummy Named, Nod to Engineer Who Helped Save Apollo 13

Two weeks ago, the American space agency launched a public voting competition meant to decide on an essential aspect of the upcoming, first-ever Artemis mission: the name of the dummy that will fly to the Moon in the Orion capsule. As June ended, the name has been revealed.
Arturo Campos is the official name of the Moonikin 9 photos
Photo: NASA
NASA's team lifting the 212-foot-tall SLS rocket's core stage and its four RS-25 engines to the mobile launcher to place it in between smaller boostersNASA's team lifting the 212-foot-tall SLS rocket's core stage and its four RS-25 engines to the mobile launcher to place it in between smaller boostersNASA's team lifting the 212-foot-tall SLS rocket's core stage and its four RS-25 engines to the mobile launcher to place it in between smaller boostersNASA's team lifting the 212-foot-tall SLS rocket's core stage and its four RS-25 engines to the mobile launcher to place it in between smaller boostersNASA's team lifting the 212-foot-tall SLS rocket's core stage and its four RS-25 engines to the mobile launcher to place it in between smaller boostersNASA's team lifting the 212-foot-tall SLS rocket's core stage and its four RS-25 engines to the mobile launcher to place it in between smaller boostersNASA's team lifting the 212-foot-tall SLS rocket's core stage and its four RS-25 engines to the mobile launcher to place it in between smaller boostersNASA's team lifting the 212-foot-tall SLS rocket's core stage and its four RS-25 engines to the mobile launcher to place it in between smaller boosters
There were eight entries in the competition at the start of the voting process, from vague concepts like ACE (Artemis Crew Explorer) or Delos, after the name of the place where both Apollo and Artemis are said to have been born, to proper names from NASA’s glorious past, like Irene Duhart Long, Julius Montgomery, or Arturo Campos.

When all was done earlier this week, the name that emerged victorious was Arturo Campos, and this is the name the NASA dummy will be carrying to space on its trip around the Moon.

Campos was one of the many people on deck in the Manned Spacecraft Center during Apollo 13 in the 1970s and instrumental to the mission not turning into a major disaster.

As we already know, NASA has a habit of making contingency plans for everything it can think of, and even for things it can’t. For Apollo 13, one such contingency plan covered what to do if the service module oxygen tank aboard the Apollo spacecraft ruptured.

As history notes it, this is exactly what happened with Apollo 13 and led to what must have been one of the craziest rides NASA has ever known. The said contingency plan was devised by Campos and modified on the fly to handle the challenges the crew had to face in space.

So, even if the engineer didn’t get to fly into space himself, his name will do so when the Artemis 1 mission takes off later this year. It will be slapped on a dummy NASA called until now Moonikin, a piece of hardware also used for the Orion vibration tests.

The Campos mannequin, who is male, will not fly alone into space but accompanied by two model human torsos, one male and one female. They are generically called phantoms, but also named Zohar and Helga, and their role will be to provide data on radiation levels during missions to the Moon.
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Editor's note: Gallery shows Artemis SLS rocket being assembled

About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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