Three pages. That’s how long the cargo manifest for the Artemis I Moon mission is, with a total of over 80 items to be flown around the Moon and back. The total weight to be carried by the Orion capsule is 120 pounds (54 kilograms), and within that pile of items are some very interesting and unexpected things.
We’ll start with the least impressive ones, which include pins (a silver Snoopy, SLS, Orion, NASA), patches (showing representations of Artemis I, Orion, ESA, JAXA, Apollo 17), and flags (for the SLS program, the U.S. and some of its states, Artemis I, and international ones of partner nations).
For some reason, NASA decided to include bits and pieces of the hardware that will be used for the mission as cargo as well. That’s how we get metal shavings from the mobile launcher, the SLS rocket itself, and the Orion spaceship taking a cozy trip inside.
A good chunk of the Artemis I cargo comes in the form of the Campos Moonikin astronaut dummy, which will stand in for real humans, and the two dolls to be used as zero-g indicators, Snoopy and Shaun the Sheep. They will be accompanied on the let’s-call-it-toy-front by a 3D-printed goddess Artemis, and four LEGO minifigures.
On the miscellaneous side of things, we get stuff like a copy of the NASA Authorization Act of 2010, a photo of Apollo members inside the Orion facility, and a number of tree and plants seeds. All that is accompanied by the Lunar sample button from Apollo 11, and a Dead Sea pebble for some reason.
There are also a number of modern technologies that will go up, in the form of microchips with the names of the people involved in Artemis 1, but also USB drives filled with the names of average Joes that took part in the Fly Your Name in Space campaign, and various videos, images, drawings, writings.
Artemis I is scheduled for lift off on August 29, so you have enough time left to study the mission’s cargo manifest in full. You can find it in the PDF section below.
For some reason, NASA decided to include bits and pieces of the hardware that will be used for the mission as cargo as well. That’s how we get metal shavings from the mobile launcher, the SLS rocket itself, and the Orion spaceship taking a cozy trip inside.
A good chunk of the Artemis I cargo comes in the form of the Campos Moonikin astronaut dummy, which will stand in for real humans, and the two dolls to be used as zero-g indicators, Snoopy and Shaun the Sheep. They will be accompanied on the let’s-call-it-toy-front by a 3D-printed goddess Artemis, and four LEGO minifigures.
On the miscellaneous side of things, we get stuff like a copy of the NASA Authorization Act of 2010, a photo of Apollo members inside the Orion facility, and a number of tree and plants seeds. All that is accompanied by the Lunar sample button from Apollo 11, and a Dead Sea pebble for some reason.
There are also a number of modern technologies that will go up, in the form of microchips with the names of the people involved in Artemis 1, but also USB drives filled with the names of average Joes that took part in the Fly Your Name in Space campaign, and various videos, images, drawings, writings.
Artemis I is scheduled for lift off on August 29, so you have enough time left to study the mission’s cargo manifest in full. You can find it in the PDF section below.