NASA takes science seriously. But the space agency also likes to have fun sometimes. Last week, NASA called on the public to take a close look at a photo of the interior of the Orion spacecraft in search of secret “Easter eggs”. The agency hid them in funny puzzles, concealed and visual messages. After the spacecraft successfully landed, marking the success of the Artemis I mission, NASA released the answers.
There were no people on board the capsule, but it was equipped with many other items, including a manikin in an orange spacesuit, a Snoopy toy and advanced Amazon Alexa voice assistant technology, which even activated a disco party on board the spacecraft.
There were five hidden messages in the crew cabin.
The red bird in the upper right corner is a tribute to the memory of former Orion program manager and Johnson Space Center Director Mark Geyer, who died in 2021. Geyer was a big fan of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team, which has a red bird on its logo.
A set of dots and dashes above the on-board computer are read from bottom to top as “Charlie”. This is also a post-mortem tribute. Charlie Lundqvist, deputy head of the Orion program, died in 2020. He worked on Orion since 2008.
A series of numbers starting with 1 were plotted just below the on-board computer. These are the codes of the countries that worked on the development of the service module. The numbers honor the United States, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Spain and the Netherlands.
The row of letters CBAGF on the right side of the spacecraft are references to the notes used in Frank Sinatra’s 1964 recording Fly Me to the Moon. This is a way to connect the modern Orion with the era of lunar exploration of the Apollo era.
The last “Easter egg” is located in the upper part of the pilot’s seat to the right of the red NASA logo. This is the binary code of the number 18. With this number, Artemida hinted at the continuation of the lunar mission, where Apollo stopped 50 years ago, because the last one was the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
Perhaps there were no people on board Orion, but the spacecraft brought with it a lot of human emotions.
Earlier, we showed how the ESA published a record of the most spectacular moments of the Artemis I mission.
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