New Delhi, May 16 (IANS). ‘Rise’, the zero-gravity indicator and official mascot of NASA’s Artemis II mission, has now arrived at the headquarters of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). CSA also revealed the schedule of ‘Rise’ by posting a special video on social media.
Posting the video of Rise’s special VIP tour on its official Instagram, the agency introduced Rise as an official member of the team and wrote, “A VIP tour like no other!” After completing the Artemis II mission, RISE travels to Canada with the crew members. It was welcomed with great enthusiasm at the CSA headquarters.
Rise began his tour at the main entrance, where he admired a model of the CanadaArm 2 robotic arm. After this he saw the robotics mission control room and the astronauts’ training center. After reaching the training gym, Rise also did a light workout. At the end of the day this little mascot reached the library, where he got new inspiration.
Let us tell you, Rise is a zero-gravity indicator. Astronauts carry it with the capsule to know when the spacecraft has escaped Earth’s gravity and reached space. When the rise starts floating in the air, it is considered that zero gravity has now started. It’s not just a toy. An SD card was placed inside the Rise, which contained records of the names of 56,47,889 people from around the world. These names were collected under the ‘Send Your Name with Artemis’ campaign.
Rise was designed by Lucas, an 8-year-old student from California. Lucas’ design was selected out of more than 2,600 entries from more than 50 countries in NASA’s ‘Moon Mascot Design Challenge’. This design is dedicated to ‘Earthrise’ of Apollo-8 mission. RISE is custom-built at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. It is very light and soft, so that it can easily float in space.
The four astronauts of the Artemis II mission, Reed Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen, took Rise with them on their journey to the Moon.
–IANS
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