NASA Hides Secret Easter Eggs Into The Artemis I Orion Capsule
Following Orion’s successful splash down into the Pacific Ocean last week marking the end of the Artemis I flight, NASA revealed it had hidden Easter eggs aboard the spacecraft.
As Gizmodo points out, this isn’t the first time the agency has done so, and in fact, it has a longstanding practice of stashing secret messages or mementos on its capsules heading into orbit.
For example, in 1977, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 carried a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk—better known as The Golden Record—filled with images and sounds representing life on Earth, just in case of aliens stumbled upon it.
This time, the engineers fittingly stuck to items related to the Moon, with five secret messages hidden around the cabin.
First, the binary code for the number ‘18’ was placed atop the pilot’s seat as a tribute to the previous Apollo program, and to mark the agency’s return to the Moon for the first time after Apollo 17 touched down on Earth.
To the right of the pilot’s seat is an image of a cardinal, paying homage to the first Orion Program manager, Johnson Space Center director, and devout St Louis Cardinals fan Mark Geyer, who sadly passed away last year.
The morse code for “Charlie” sits above the Callisto voice-activated technology setup, to remember the life of former Orion Deputy Program Manager Charlie Lundquist, who worked on the spacecraft between 2008 and when he died in 2020.
In addition, to commemorate the international partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA), the country codes of each country that contributed to the building of the spacecraft’s module are etched in front of the pilot’s seat.
Last but not least, the letters “CBAGF” can be found on the capsule’s starboard under one of the windows, which are the musical notes to the famed Frank Sinatra hit Fly Me To The Moon, which is closely associated with the Apollo missions.
With NASA wrapping up Artemis I and gearing up for Artemis II, we will soon see the first woman and first person of color reach the Moon’s surface. And who knows what other hidden codes they’ll incorporate into the spacecraft then?
