The first astronauts set to fly to the Moon in more than 50 years will do so in Integrity.
NASA's Artemis II crew revealed Integrity as the name of their Orion spacecraft during a news conference on Wednesday at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
"We thought, as a crew, we need to name this spacecraft. We need to have a name for the Orion spacecraft that we're going to ride this magical mission on," said Reid Wiseman, commander of the Artemis II mission.
During Apollo, the previous NASA program to send astronauts to the Moon, the crews chose names to distinguish their pair of spacecraft—the command and service module and the lunar module—while they were in separate flights. As later vehicles, such as NASA's space shuttle orbiters and SpaceX's Dragon capsules, became reusable, names were used to help engage the public and impart a sense of character to each craft.
With Artemis, Wiseman wanted a name that would not only reflect their mission but would also define their success.
"We're bringing together the world," he said. "We're bringing together an amazing workforce, and they are bringing together an amazing vehicle."
Name game
As it turned out, the crew had no shortage of ideas.
Sequestering themselves in the same facility where they would be quarantined before their scheduled launch in early 2026, Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen, as well as their backups, Andre Douglas and Jenny Gibbons, found their integrity.
"We had all kinds of things," Koch said in an interview. "We had sentences, phrases, we had light-hearted [monikers], we had mantras. We had names, we had geography. Everything was on the table. We really wanted it to be a completely open forum."
"There were names that I loved," said Wiseman, "there were names that Christina loved. We all had our little pet names."