Snoopy, the anthropomorphic dog, to ride on NASA's Artemis I Moon mission

Snoopy is an anthropomorphic beagle in the comic strip Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz and has contributed to the excitement for NASA human spaceflight missions. 

New Delhi: US space agency NASA has announced that Snoopy will ride on the Artemis I mission, slated for 2022, like the zero-gravity indicator. Snoopy is an anthropomorphic beagle in the comic strip Peanuts by Charles M Schulz, and has contributed to the excitement for NASA human spaceflight missions for more than 50 years, since Apollo missions and continues under Artemis with new educational activities.

Artemis I is an uncrewed flight test of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft around the Moon launching in early 2022 before missions with astronauts.

Without astronauts aboard Orion, Snoopy will help share the journey with the world as he rides along in the cabin with a manikin and two other "passengers", NASA said in a statement on Friday. Zero gravity indicators are small items carried aboard spacecraft that provide a visual indicator when a spacecraft has reached the weightlessness of microgravity.