NASA may be serious about science, but the space agency likes to have fun, too. On Wednesday, NASA challenged the public to scour an image of the interior of the Artemis I Orion spacecraft in search of hidden Easter eggs, which it describes as «fun puzzles, hidden messages, and visual references.»
Twitter users are working to decipher the puzzles, so you may want to avoid the comments if you’d like to figure it out for yourself.
Orion is on its way back home after a spectacular November launch that kicked off NASA’s new Artemis era of moon exploration. The capsule has no humans on board, but it’s stocked with lots of other items, including a manikin in an orange spacesuit, a Snoopy toy and a technology demonstration that uses Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant.
Here’s a bigger image to expand:
I won’t drop any major spoilers, but I can get you started in your cosmic treasure hunt. Look at the top center of the image and spot the series of black dots and dashes. Start at the bottom and translate the Morse code to reveal a name. I have a theory about who it references, but I’m not going to say.
The Artemis I mission has gone smoothly so far, sending the spacecraft out beyond the moon as NASA seeks to prove Orion is ready to carry human astronauts for Artemis II.
NASA said it will reveal all the Easter eggs on Dec. 10, the day before Orion is scheduled to return to Earth with an ocean splashdown. How many will you find?