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2d ago

8-Year-Old’s Plush ‘Rise’ Flies on Artemis II as Zero-Gravity Indicator

The student-designed mascot highlights NASA’s push to involve the public in its lunar program.

Mountain View resident Lucas Ye designed a plushie that was used on the Artetmis II mission as a zero gravity indicator.
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Overview

  • NASA’s Artemis II launched with a student-designed stuffed toy named Rise that will float to show the crew when they reach weightlessness.
  • Rise won a Freelancer-run contest that drew about 2,600 entries from more than 50 countries, with the Artemis II crew helping choose the design.
  • The winner, 8-year-old Lucas Ye of Mountain View, California, traveled with his family to Kennedy Space Center to watch his creation lift off.
  • NASA plans a roughly 10-day lunar flyby that includes a brief communications blackout behind the moon and a splashdown off San Diego around April 10.
  • The plush continues a long spaceflight tradition of zero-gravity mascots that dates to Yuri Gagarin and has recently included Snoopy and Baby Yoda.