Meet the 8-year-old from California whose plushie is on the way to Artemis II

The California native is heading to Artemis II – and she’s not human.

RISE, a beautiful model created by 8-year-old Lucas Ye, joins four astronauts aboard Artemis II, which will launch Wednesday at 6:24 pm ET, marking the first human mission to return to the moon in more than half a century.

“I was so proud and so excited,” the Mountain View-raised boy said in a video shared with the California Post, explaining the inspiration for his plushie. “I love space, I love rockets, I love NASA, I love the solar system. I love learning about space.”

The round, white-blue toy is a hat decorated with the Earth and a mouth with constellations and rockets.

The design is inspired by the “Earthrise” image taken during Apollo 8 — an image that mission scientist Christina Koch said shows the Artemis II’s atmosphere, according to organizers.

The Moon Mascot: NASA Artemis II ZGI Design Challenge was held at Freelancer on behalf of NASA. Freelancer, the world’s largest freelancing and crowdsourcing platform with more than 87 million users, is one of 25 companies awarded NASA’s Open Innovation Services 3 contract.

“On behalf of everyone at Freelancer, congratulations to the winner – what an incredible achievement. Your design goes places, which is not a statement that many people can say,” said Trisha Epp, Chief Innovation Officer at Freelancer.

Ye’s design was among hundreds of ideas from around the world.

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“My CGI is called RISE and it stands for Earthrise. The cap represents Earth in Earthrise. The white represents both past and future missions, and the Orion constellation represents Artemis II,” Ye explained the plushie in his own words.

“The moon, with a small foot on the back, represents the past missions of Apollo. “The step was made by Neil Armstrong of Apollo 11,” he continued to explain.

Yes, he’s an 8-year-old space enthusiast who didn’t just design RISE — he also built his own residence, although the competition only required a design proposal, according to a freelancer.

They said: “He is very talkative and passionate about this work.

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Follow The Post for updates on the launch of NASA’s Artemis II mission to the moon

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Some of the finalists in the NASA Artemis II ZGI Design Challenge showcased designs from around the world. Entries included Anzhelika Iudakova’s “Big Steps for a Little Octopus” from Finland, Daniela Colina’s “Corey the Explorer” from Peru, Johanna Beck’s “Creation Mythos” from McPherson, Kansas, and Oakville Trafalgar High School’s “Lepus the Moon Rabbit” from Canada.

NASA has launched a global design challenge with Freelancer to create a Zero Gravity Marker for Artemis II – a small float to indicate when the crew reaches weight. The tradition began with Yuri Gagarin’s Vostok 1 mission in 1961 and has featured everything from Snoopy on Artemis I to Baby Yoda on SpaceX Crew-1.

The competition attracted more than 2,600 entries from more than 50 countries, and the Artemis II team – including director Reid Wiseman – helped select Lucas Ye’s winning design from the final list of five.

A small SD card with the names of everyone who signed up for the challenge is stored inside RISE for the flight – turning the bottle into a mini-time capsule heading into space.

“The jury had a really hard time with this. You’d open a proposal, and it would come from a student in Finland, or a science fiction writer in Germany, or a kid in Texas who clearly spent weeks getting all the details right,” said Epp, who led the challenge and is head of NASA’s collaborative programs. Each entry brings something personal to it – you can tell how much this means to people. It was a privilege to see that kind of passion and creativity emerge. “

The team selected for the Artemis II mission, beyond Ye’s plushie, included NASA Administrator Reid Wiseman, astronaut Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency mission specialist Jeremy Hansen.

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