Sept. 9 (UPI) — NASA invited the public on Tuesday to grab a boarding pass and be a part of the space agency’s test flight of its Artemis II mission set to launch four astronauts into orbit next year.
Officials at the U.S. space agency NASA said its public effort to involve civilians in the orbital venture around the moon and back in the Artemis test mission flight means individual spots for “Send Your Name with Artemis II” need to be claimed before January 21.
The Artemis II program is a “key test flight in our effort to return humans to the moon’s surface and build toward future missions to Mars,” according to Lori Glaze, NASA’s acting associate director for exploration systems development based in the nation’s capital.
NASA is prepping for its 10-day Artemis II 1 mission next year that will send a crew of four astronauts around the moon in the bid to prep for future crewed landings on Earth’s neighboring satellite and beyond.
Notably, Artemis II will carry the first woman and person of color to the lunar surface in what has been described by NASA as a so-called “Golden Age of innovation and exploration.”
America’s NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, are set to lift off no later than April aboard the Orion spacecraft and its space launch system rocket as the first crewed flight under NASA’s Artemis campaign.
“And it’s also an opportunity to inspire people across the globe and to give them an opportunity to follow along as we lead the way in human exploration deeper into space,” Glaze said in a statement.
NASA’s “send your name” initiative for the Artemis space mission with allow a person to send an individual name on an SD card along with the four-person crew as they test their rocket for critical hardware systems required for deep space exploration.
And, on return to Earth, participants can download their personalized inscribed boarding pass as a collectable.
“Your name could be flying to the Moon!” Canada’s space agency posted Tuesday on X as it called out for virtual crew members to fly alongside CSA’s Hansen on Orion.
NASA officials — who’ve assigned both English and Spanish sign-up portals — have called it yet “another step” toward new U.S.-crewed moon surface missions on the way toward ultimately sending the first American astronauts to Mars for the first time.