By Henry Hernandez
It has been a long time since the United States has gone to the moon. It is like since we were there, there was nothing else to see, so we just stopped going. But the time has been set to return space exploration. The moon is the first step of many including a moon base and a manned trip to Mars. But before that can happen NASA needs a rocket to get there. That is where the Artemis Project comes in.
The Artemis I Orion spacecraft just completed the first test mission to the moon. While it did not land on the moon, the spacecraft did travel launch from Earth, travel around the moon and returned safely back home. This mission was to test the safety of the ship and will eventually carry astronauts back and forth from the moon. This trip did carry something else however.
We may be used to seeing Easter eggs in movies, but now NASA is in on the action. They included five secret Easter eggs on this mission, which we can all know about since it got back safe. Each of these “eggs” were to commemorate the history of NASA going to the moon back in the sixties and early seventies.
The first secret egg is a Cardinal seen perched above the pilot window. The cardinal is a tribute to those who have died, but more than that, it is also the favorite baseball team of program manager Mark Geyer. There is no accounting for taste in sports teams. He died in 2021, but the team wanted to show that he was there with them on this mission.
The second egg is another tribute to a fallen member of the team. Right in the middle of the cabin is a bit of morse code that spells out the name Charlie. It is for Charlie Lundquist, who was the Orion deputy program manager, who died in 2020.
Thankfully, the third egg was not another tribute to fallen member of the program. NASA wanted to show all the countries that helped make this mission possible. They are represented by a country code and they were also on the mission. Want to know who helped? Codes for Germany, Italy, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Spain and the Netherlands, were all represented on this trip.
The next egg was the musical notes “C, B, A, G, F.. Don’t know what that song was? Of course it is “Fly Me to the Moon,” by Frank Sinatra, who was from Hoboken, New Jersey. It was originally recorded in 1964, so you may have to ask your grandparents about that one. The song is appropriate for this mission, and NASA says that it is like a theme song. You always need tunes for a long road trip.
The last egg is binary code that spells out the number 18. That was to signify that this is a return to the moon after the last mission there in 1972 (yes fifty years ago to the day) on Apollo 17. Each of these eggs have travelled 1.4 million miles, so they need a rest. How exciting is it that people will be returning to the moon after fifty years?
