Next year, humanity will take another giant leap toward the Moon. NASA is preparing to launch the first manned mission, Artemis II, in half a century, and now everyone has a unique opportunity to immortalize their name in space. The agency is inviting people from around the world to add their names to a digital manifest that will travel around the Moon with the Orion spacecraft crew.
Applications can be submitted on NASA’s official website until December 31, 2025. Each participant will receive a personalized boarding pass – a stylish digital souvenir in English or Spanish. This campaign continues the tradition begun during the Artemis I mission, when millions of names participated in the journey to the Moon and back.
Paving the way to Mars
Artemis II is not just a flight, but a key test phase in NASA’s ambitious program to return humans to the Moon and launch subsequent missions to Mars. Following the success of the Orion unmanned flight in 2022, it is time to test all of the spacecraft’s systems with a real crew on board.
Photo: NASA/Flickr
“Artemis II is an opportunity to inspire people around the world and give them the chance to watch as we pave the way for human exploration into deep space,” emphasizes Lori Glaze, a NASA executive. The mission aims to ensure that Orion is ready to safely transport astronauts into deep space and return them to Earth.
Crew and deep space testing
The historic flight will be made up of the following crew: NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, as well as their colleague from the Canadian Space Agency, Jeremy Hansen. Their journey to the Moon, its orbit, and return to Earth will take about 10 days.
The crew’s main task is to thoroughly test all of Orion’s life support systems. The astronauts will check how the equipment generates breathable air and removes carbon dioxide and moisture. They will pay particular attention to how the systems perform during peak loads, such as physical exercise, and during sleep, when metabolism slows down.
How to join the mission
Your name will be stored on a MicroSD card and uploaded aboard the spacecraft along with millions of other names from around the world. This is a chance to be part of a collective achievement of humanity, symbolically accompanying the first people to travel to the Moon in decades.
For those who want more than just symbolic participation, NASA is also inviting submissions of ideas for the development of new lunar tires for future missions. This is a unique opportunity for engineers and inventors to contribute to space exploration.
We previously reported on how NASA is starting to build a rocket for the Artemis III mission.
Provided by popsci.com
