Artemis 2 Will Carry a Piece of the Wright Flyer and Other Historic Artifacts on Its Lunar Flyby

NASA's Artemis 2 mission will carry not only four astronauts around the Moon but also a curated collection of historic aerospace artifacts aboard the Orion spacecraft, the agency announced on Jan. 21. The items — ranging from a swatch of the Wright Brothers' 1903 Flyer to flags that flew on milestone shuttle missions — are intended to celebrate the long arc of American aviation and space exploration.

"Historical artifacts flying aboard Artemis 2 reflect the long arc of American exploration and the generations of innovators who made this moment possible," NASA said in a statement.

Artemis 2 will launch on a Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch alongside Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. The crew will make a roughly 10-day loop around the Moon and return to Earth aboard Orion. NASA is targeting an early February launch window; if successful, this will be the first crewed mission to lunar space since Apollo 17 in 1972.

What Will Fly Aboard Orion

Orion will carry about 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms) of mementos and artifacts selected to link past achievements to future exploration. Highlights include:

• Wright Flyer Swatch: A 1-square-inch (6.5 sq cm) piece of muslin from the Wright Brothers' 1903 Flyer, on loan from the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. A smaller fragment of the same swatch previously flew on the space shuttle Discovery (STS-51D) in 1985, and a different swatch accompanied NASA's Ingenuity helicopter to Mars.
• Historic American Flag: An 8-by-13-inch (20 by 33 cm) American flag that flew on STS-1 (the shuttle's first flight in 1981) and STS-135 (the shuttle program's final flight in 2011), and later on SpaceX's Demo-2 mission in 2020.
• Apollo 18 Flight Flag: A flag originally slated for the canceled Apollo 18 mission will make its first flight with Orion, symbolizing both the Apollo legacy and America's renewed commitment to lunar exploration.
• Ranger 7 Photo Negative: A negative of a 1964 image taken by Ranger 7, NASA's first mission to return close-up pictures of the Moon — imagery that helped select safe Apollo landing sites.
• Moon-Tree Soil Samples: Soil taken from the bases of "moon trees" grown from seeds that orbited the Moon and returned on Artemis 1; the samples in the flight kit come from trees planted at NASA research centers.
• Public Participation SD Card: An SD card containing the names of millions who signed up for NASA's "Send Your Name to Space" campaign for Artemis 2.
• International Patches and Stickers: Mission patches and stickers from partners including the Canadian Space Agency and the European Space Agency (ESA); ESA provided the Orion service module.

These artifacts are lightweight tokens with symbolic weight: they link the dunes of Kitty Hawk and the shuttle era to the next chapter of human lunar exploration. NASA says the items are meant to honor early milestones while inspiring future generations who will follow the Artemis program back to the Moon.