Only a very lucky few people ever get to travel into space, but more than 5.6 million names just completed a journey around the Moon, stored on a microSD card carried aboard NASA’s Artemis II mission.
That flight sent four astronauts farther from Earth than humans have ever traveled, completing a roughly 10-day mission that orbited the Moon before safely returning to Earth.
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The microSD card, carrying 5,647,889 submitted names, was zipped into Rise, the mission’s mascot, a cartoonish Moon wearing a cap covered in stars. The mascot itself was designed by a year three student from California, called Lucas Ye, whose artwork was selected from more than 2,600 entries from over 50 countries.
While the specific card zipped inside Rise was certified for spaceflight conditions, it traces its lineage to the SanDisk Ultra series used by people here on Earth inside cameras, handheld devices, and portable recording gear.
The consumer version of the SanDisk Ultra microSD series comes in 16 and 32GB capacities and supports both microSD and microSDHC formats, making it compatible with a wide range of devices used for everyday recording and storage tasks.
Rated at Class 10 speeds, the card supports read speeds of up to 80MB/s, which suits Full HD video capture, burst photography, and quick file transfers.
It's durable, with protection against water, temperature extremes, and X-ray exposure, and maybe (but we wouldn't bet on it), trips around the Moon.
After splashdown, the mission mascot didn’t stay tucked away inside the spacecraft as it should have done according to NASA's mission rules, Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman later revealed on X.
“I was supposed to leave Rise in Integrity….but that was not something I was going to do. I stuffed that little guy in a dry bag we had in our survival kit and hooked the bag onto my pressure suit,” he wrote.
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