Image: astronaut Reid Wiseman and his mascot
Despite all the high tech in space, the astronaut’s most reliable friend is a mascot. In a session on the opening day of SXSW 2025 in Austin, astronauts who are slated to pass close to the Moon in a couple of years captivated the audience with their talk of mascots.
Christina Koch said “I can’t stress enough how much this thing becomes the mascot of your crew, because it’s the only thing allowed in the cabin that’s not been hardware-certified or designed by the Orion engineers, and it’s the coolest thing ever. It starts floating when you’re in space, and as we’re all still strapped in our seats, there’s really nothing else to show that you are actually in space for the in-cabin camera views except your zero-gravity indicator that is floating around.”
Koch announced a contest for a mascot for the upcoming lunar mission on the Artemis 2 spacecraft. As of early 2025, it is still on track, but there have been rumblings that the entire program may be scrapped and replaced by a Musk-led endeavour to land people on Mars instead. Artemis 2 will perform the same mission performed by Apollo 8 in 1968.
Instead of turning the mascot selection into what Koch termed a “friction point” between the 4-person crew, “we are putting this contest out to you all. We would love it if someone in this audience, but actually anyone from around the world, can enter into this contest and hopefully design what’s going to go around the Moon in our capsule with us.”
The contest is open until May 27, and is being run by Freelancer. Depending on age of the applicants, up to 25 entries will win $1,225 each or an Artemis prize pack. The finished mascot must fit into a 6-inch square and weight no more than 0.75 pounds. Allowable materials are: Nomex thread; faux fur, polyester or cotton; Beta cloth, Kevlar or vinyl; Kapton/VDA polyimide film; and poly-fil for stuffing.
Koch was on stage with fellow Artemis 2 crew members Reid Wiseman (former Head of the Astronaut Office at NASA), and Jeremy Hansen (a Canadian astronaut). Pilot Victor Glover was unable to attend the event.
The SXSW audience was captivated when astronaut Reid Wiseman pulled a giraffe out of his pocket. Dubbed Giraffiti, it was his zero-G mascot his trip to space in 2014. “Giraffiti flew with me on my one and only flight to the International Space Station (ISS). He still has a little bit of stitching on his neck so that he can be hung up in our Soyuz,’ referring to the Russian spacecraft that carried him to and from the ISS. “This was the first gift my mom ever gave to my first-born daughter, so this was very sentimental,” Wiseman said.
The history of carrying a zero-gravity indicator into space goes back to the very first manned flight. Yuri Gagarin carried a doll with him in his 1961 flight. Over the years, many such have been flown, with animals including a sequined dinosaur and a sparkly narwhal doubling as both the indicator and the flight mascot. Since the 1960s, Snoopy has the been the safety mascot at NASA.
So what will be chosen for the Artemis 2 crew? In a wistful moment, Wiseman said “The indicator will float alongside Victor, Christine, Jeremy, and me as we go around the far side of the Moon and remind us of all you back on Earth.”