Okay, so there’s a crew of sorts…
While there are no humans aboard Orion this morning, there are some characters who have.
One of them is Commander Moonikin Campos – he is the captain and will be sitting in the commander’s seat the entire time. It’s a mannequin.
Like Boaty McBoatface before him, Moonikin Campos was appointed by public vote. It honors Arturo Campos, an engineer who helped bring Apollo 13 safely to Earth.
Not content with sitting in the commander’s seat like a real Captain Kirk, Moonikin Campos will also wear an Orion Crew Survival System suit and be equipped with radiation, acceleration and vibration sensors.
Two female mannequins will be added to Moonikin Campos: Helga and Zohar.
Helga was named by the German Aerospace Center, and Zohar by the Israeli Space Agency.
As Sky’s David Blevins discovered before one of Artemis’ missed launches in the summer, both are made of materials that mimic the soft tissue, organs, bones, lungs and brain tissue of a woman to test how radiation passes through the body.
The torsos have more than 5,600 sensors and 34 radiation detectors to measure radiation exposure within different organs during the mission.
Zohar will be wearing AstroRad, a radiation shielding vest, while Helga will be unprotected.
Joining the mannequins will be a stuffed toy of Snoopy the dog, which will float around the spaceship as an indicator of zero gravity.