From a second-grader’s stuffed animal to a yo-yo that doubles as a gym, here’s everything heading to lunar orbit on one of the most anticipated space missions in decades. Four astronauts have climbed into a capsule the size of two minivans and launched into space to hurtle toward the Moon for the first time in over 50 years. What have they taken with them? A surprisingly relatable mix of cutting-edge tech, ingenious engineering, and at least one item that belongs in a toy store.
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NASA didn’t commission some bespoke $10 million space camera. It bought a Nikon Z9 – the same flagship mirrorless that wildlife and sports photographers use on Earth. Engineers tweaked the firmware, optimized settings for deep space, and modified the file transfer protocol for beaming images home. The result is a 45.7-megapixel powerhouse that will soon be shooting the Moon from 4,600 miles beyond its surface.
This SD card isn’t to store the photos they take on the Z9s. Instead, it is carrying the names of over two million people who signed up for NASA’s “Send Your Name to the Moon” initiative. Entirely symbolic but there’s something wonderful about a card smaller than your thumb carrying millions of human names around the Moon and back.
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Every crewed spaceflight carries a small stuffed animal for a very specific, very low-tech purpose. The moment it floats freely, the crew knows they’ve hit microgravity. For Artemis II, that honour goes to a baseball cap-wearing plushie designed by a second-grader. In a mission packed with billion-dollar hardware, a child’s creation is official flight equipment. Genuinely wonderful.
The treadmill, resistance machine, and exercise bike on the ISS together weigh over 4,000 pounds, roughly triple Orion’s entire interior volume. So NASA’s solution is the flywheel, officially the Resistive Overload Combined with Kinetic Yo-Yo (ROCKY). It weighs 30 pounds, fits in a carry-on bag, and works exactly like a yo-yo: pull the cable, the flywheel spins, and it pulls back with up to 400 pounds of resistance. Squats, deadlifts, rows – the whole workout. It also doubles as a boarding step on launch day. Someone should sell this at a gym.
The crew will also have personal tablets and laptops aboard which will be loaded up before launch with procedure manuals, reference documents, and, crucially, movies. Ten days is a long time in a tin can, and even astronauts need to unwind. What’s on the Artemis II watchlist? NASA hasn’t disclosed. But if I were about to become one of the first humans to see the far side of the Moon up close in half a century, I’d probably bring something good.
For decades, NASA banned personal consumer electronics from government crewed flights. That changed in early 2026, when Administrator Jared Isaacman approved smartphones for Artemis II. Don’t expect live posts from lunar orbit, any content still travels through NASA’s systems before reaching Earth. But spontaneous photos and personal video diaries 230,000 miles from home are absolutely on the table.
No gear list would be complete without the toilet. NASA’s Universal Waste Management System, doing the unglamorous but utterly essential work of keeping four humans comfortable in a sealed capsule for 10 days. It’s one of the first things astronauts care about getting right. Built for missions like Artemis II aboard Orion, the UWMS is a compact rethink of going to the bathroom in microgravity. With no gravity to help, it relies on dual-fan airflow suction to pull urine through adjustable funnels or hoses into a separator that isolates liquid for storage, while solid waste is collected in single-use bags, sealed, and stowed for later disposal.
Artemis II lifts off with Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, and Mission Specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen – travelling farther from Earth than any humans since Apollo 17 in 1972. With a camera you can buy online, a toy designed by a seven-year-old, and a yo-yo to lift weights.
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