The winning toy chosen to serve as the crew’s official zero-gravity indicator aboard the Artemis II on its trip to the moon Wednesday was created by eight-year-old Lucas Ye of Mountain View, who beat out more than 2,600 other contestants internationally, including adults and kids.

Mountain View second grader Lucas Ye designed the winning mascot for NASA’s ‘Moon Mascot’ Challenge in partnership with the site Freelancer, which the NASA crew took aboard Artemis II Wednesday. Ye’s toy, called “Rise,” was used as a “zero-gravity indicator” to visually indicate to the crew when they’re in space, according to Popular Science.

The toy is adorned with space mission references, including two spacecraft on the visor representing the Apollo and Artemis programs, along with stars arranged to match the Orion constellation — the same name as the Artemis craft, as the New York Times reports. A footprint on the back mirrors Neil Armstrong’s boot print from Apollo 11.

The design is a nod to William Anders’ Earthrise photograph taken during the Apollo 8 mission. The toy also reportedly included a small zippered pocket that carried a data chip containing the names of more than 5.6 million people who signed up to be part of the mission.

“This little guy, Rise, really resonated with us,” said Christina Koch, one of the Artemis II astronauts, per the Times.

Popular Science predicts the on-trend, planet-themed baseball hat may soon be popping up in stores. The Times notes that NASA, which holds the rights to the toy, doesn’t yet have plans to license the design.

The contest reportedly drew submissions from more than 50 countries and was open to all ages, with top designs submitted from Finland, Peru, Kansas, and Canada. While entrants only needed to provide sketches, Lucas Ye built a physical prototype with his family, using a dryer ball to form Rise’s head.

The use of floating mascots dates back to 1961, when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin brought a small doll aboard his historic flight to signal when he reached microgravity, per Popular Science. The practice later spread across international missions, with zero-gravity indicators ranging from plush versions of R2-D2 to Albert Einstein and toy dinosaurs.

The Times notes that US missions adopted the tradition more recently. SpaceX included a plush “Little Earth Buddy” on its first uncrewed Crew Dragon test flight to the International Space Station. On the next mission, astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley brought a glittery dinosaur named “Tremor,” chosen by their sons, to continue the custom.

“It’s nice to see that that tradition is going to continue,” Hurley said.

Lucas, who traveled to Florida with his family to watch the launch Wednesday, said he’s just getting started. “I would probably like to become an engineer at NASA,” he told the Times. “When I grow up, I’ll probably be designing a space station around Mars or something.”

Top image: Freelancer

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

• 85-year-old Rogelio Barajas Martinez was  arrested in connection with the double-stabbing of a couple in Bay Point and is being held in lieu of $1 million bail at the Martinez Detention Facility. [KRON4]
• The family of 4-year-old Ayden Fang, who was fatally struck by a 19-year-old driver in Burlingame in August, are filing a civil lawsuit against the city as well as the driver after the city declined to press charges. [KGO]
• A sea otter and sea lion were found dead from avian influenza at San Mateo’s Año Nuevo State Park, and 14 elephant seals also died from the virus on the California coast. [Bay Area News Group]

National:

• NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission successfully disrupted the orbit of a pair of asteroids, Didymos and Dimorphos, around the sun. Researchers say this confirms the ability of NASA to intercept hazardous objects that could hypothetically be a threat to Earth in the future. [Mashable]
• A red fox from Southampton, England made its way all the way to New York after slipping onto a cargo ship, and it’s now living at the Bronx Zoo. [NBC News]
• BuzzFeed is on the verge of calling it quits after switching much of its workforce over to AI three years ago. [Boing Boing]

Video of the Day:

Enjoy this thrilling scene from Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine featuring Vincent Price driving a cable car across the Golden Gate Bridge.

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

A bright light with an extended tail seen burning across the night sky in the Bay Area early Thursday was no ordinary meteor.

If you happened to catch the long streak across the sky after midnight Wednesday and were still wondering what it was, it was actually the SpaceX Dragon Endeavour spacecraft returning four astronauts back to earth from the International Space Station.

The streak was seen around 12:20 am Thursday and was very visible in the clear night sky.

As KRON4 explains, this was the result of NASA's first ever medical evacuation from the ISS, with one of the four astronauts having experienced an undisclosed medical issue while onboard the ISS. NASA said that this was not considered a medical emergency.

The Dragon Endeavor capsule made an 11-hour journey from the ISS, passed through the atmosphere, and splash-landed in the Pacific near San Diego about 20 minutes after the streak was seen across the sky.

Officials did not say which of the four astronauts who returned was having the medical issue.

The quartet consisted of NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov.

All four were taken to a San Diego area hospital for observation, and the two NASA astronauts were then expected to fly back to Houston.

As ABC News reports, the four astronauts made the return to Earth one month ahead of schedule.

Cardman said of the situation, in an interview from space Wednesday, "What's not surprising to me is how well this crew came together, as a family, to help each other and just take care of each other."

The astronauts held a change-of-command ceremony on the ISS Wednesday, leaving behind two Russians and a NASA engineer.

Previously: Fireballs Seen In Evening Sky Thursday Over the Bay Were Just More Space Trash From Elon Musk

Photo via Leafa Wawryk

• Residents in the East Bay city of Antioch are being advised to dump any standing water in their yards, as an invasive mosquito known as the “yellow fever” mosquito has been located in the area for several months and was spotted this week following the rain. [KPIX]

National:

• A lawsuit has been filed against Subaru and Toyota over a faulty 12-volt battery installed in their Solterra and bZ4x electric vehicles. The suit claims the battery typically needs to be replaced in just a few months — or less than 10,000 miles, and the companies were aware of the problem before they put the vehicles on the market. [AutoBlog]
• Project 2025 architect Russell Vought was depicted as “the Reaper” in the bizarre AI-generated video that Trump posted on Thursday night. [Huffington Post]

• NASA briefly lost track of a research probe that was launched from the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in New Mexico Thursday, which ended up crash-landing on a Texas farm. [BBC]
• The creator of the animated Netflix series Dead End: Paranormal Park, which ran for two seasons before being cancelled in 2023, has had to go into hiding after Elon Musk publicly targeted him over the protagonist in the show being transgender. [Variety]

Video of the Day:

In the mid-1960s — long before hip-hop came into being, Oakland youth were revolutionizing freestyle dance, coined Oakland Boogaloo. [via West Coast Bay Area]

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

As we begin to learn today about individual lives lost and lives impacted by loss of their homes in the Bay Area's wine country and beyond — where upwards of 15 wildfires are burning concurrently many sparked almost simultaneously on Sunday night — here's a macro-level picture of what it looks like from space. This NASA image, labeled with 11 of those of fires, illustrates the huge plumes of smoke drifting offshore, and how that smoke is making it down to San Francisco where air quality remains poor today amid hazy skies.

The image, taken on Monday, is explained like so by NASA:

NASA's Aqua satellite collected this natural-color image with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, MODIS, instrument on October 09, 2017. Actively burning areas (hot spots), detected by MODIS’s thermal bands, are outlined in red. Each hot spot is an area where the thermal detectors on the MODIS instrument recognized temperatures higher than background.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the number of confirmed deaths in the fires had risen to 15, with two more added from Sonoma County. Nine of the victims appear to have been those who either did not evacuate or were unable to evacuate in time from the fast-moving Tubbs Fire in northern Santa Rosa, which began around 10 p.m. Sunday and quickly became a 20,000+-acre blaze thanks to high-speed, dry winds coming out of the west.

Two victims, an elderly couple unable to evacuate, died in the Atlas Fire in Napa County, three have died in the Redwood Complex Fire in Mendocino, and one perished in the Cascade Fire in Yuba County.

All previous coverage of the North Bay fires on SFist.

We got through a historic drought and have come out the other side after the atmospheric rivers and steady rains of this past winter in California. Especially in Northern California and around the Sierra Nevadas, satellite images show the dramatic contrasts in the landscape between 2015 and 2017, as the snow pack went from nil to 170 percent of average by this past winter.

The illustrative video above from NASA shows the before-and-afters, including Trinity Lake, north of Redding in Trinity County, and San Francisco and Monterey Bays.

[h/t: Tom's Garden]

Google's Doodles, those little pictures you see when you go to their main search page, typically acknowledge that day's holiday, anniversary, or, occasionally, make a subtle political point. But today's is pure joy, a nice reminder that there is still stuff to get excited about in these fraught and gloomy times.

Celebrating the discovery announced Wednesday of seven previously unknown "Earthlike" planets orbiting a single star in a nearby solar system, the doodle depicts an animated Earth and moon making a cosmic connection with the new planets, which our sister site Gothamist says

...are all Earth-sized, are located a mere 39 light years away, and orbit a center "ultracool dwarf" star dubbed TRAPPIST-1. (Named for the "Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope" in Chile.) It appears TRAPPIST-1 is so ultracool its orbiting planets can hold liquid water, and at least three of them are in "the habitable zone," so in a few decades they'll probably be more habitable than Earth.

According to Google, the artist responsible for today's little delight is San Francsico artist Nate Swinehart. You can see more of his work on his website. and can take a look at his web comic, LeveL, here.

Related: Google Doodle Features Fred Korematsu, Japanese-American Internment Camp Survivor

Everyone loves Yosemite National Park (even President Obama!), and photos abound of the park in all its glory — think firefalls, art installations, and rare foxes. Well, we know have another picture to add to the stack: Yosemite Valley from space.

The Chronicle highlighted the tweet from Astronaut Jeff Williams calling out the park for its beauty. He also photographed a bunch of other national parks (Badlands National Park, and Olympic National Park to name a few), but, of course, Yosemite is our favorite.

According to the astronaut, the above picture shows Yosemite Valley, Glacier Point, and Half Dome. He also posted a high resolution, wide-angle shot of the park online.

Related: Despicable Woman Sentenced For Vandalizing Seven National Parks With Her 'Art'

According to the Exploratorium, there are just 100 miles in Southeast Asia from which a total Solar Eclipse, the astronomical event of the year, will be visible. Wait, you couldn't get to Micronesia in time? Well, even if you're out of the zone, you're in luck thanks to them.

The Exploratorium, after all, has been expanding the audience for eclipses and the like with live video since 1998, and this time is no exception.

"We sent a production crew thousands of miles by plane and by boat to the coral island of Woleai, in the Pacific Ocean 500 miles north of New Guinea," the Exploratorium explains on their dedicated site. The journey was even documented on their blog.

From four telescopes, follow along above as the moon blocks out the sun for what NASA tells us will be about four (or fewer) glorious minutes. There's more, too, as a partial eclipse in areas along the "path of totality" will be visible for more than an hour before and after the main event. So make sure to start watching before it starts at 5:00 p.m. PST and expect the show to go on until 6:15 p.m. In fact, the telescope feed starts at 4 p.m. and goes to 7.

And for those who snoozed through astronomy class, check out this NASA eclipse explainer below.

"The coolness factor is off scale high," Exploratorium staff scientist Paul Doherty, Ph.D. tells ABC7. "I've seen 10 solar eclipses and they still thrill me to death."

Last, if you're near Exploratorium HQ, swing by for free after 5 p.m., and you can watch and learn from Exploratorium staff — the whole program is here.

The perennial question, "What will Google do with X," gets juicier when X is a NASA airfield of 1,000 acres, several hangars, two runways, a flight operations building, and a private golf course.

Google has long used Mountain View's Moffett Field as a launch pad for Sergey and Larry's jet-setting — which caused some controversy last year when it became known that they were benefitting from NASA's jet fuel discounts — but now, according to a NASA press release, Google real estate subsidiary Planetary Ventures LLC has officially signed a lease on the facility. They'll be paying $1.16 billion in rent to NASA over 60 years, as was previously reported in February.

The historic Hangar One at Moffett was built by the Navy during the 1930s to house military dirigibles, and though it would be natural to speculate about Google dirigibles, plans for the 350,000 square foot structure include, according to the press release, the development of robots, rovers, and space and aviation projects.

"As NASA expands its presence in space, we are making strides to reduce our footprint here on Earth,” the release quotes NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. Google plans to invest more than $200 million in capital improvements to the site including the creation of an educational facility "where the public can explore the site’s legacy and the role of technology in the history of Silicon Valley."

It's all a bit reminiscent of the Google Barge, a project that got docked for safety concerns. But taking to the seas isn't as exciting as taking to the skies, and, now that Elon Musk is working on satellites and Virgin Galactic is still trying to get off the ground (and not crash), are we entering an era of a great tech space race?

Be sure to check out the full moon on Saturday night, which promises to be super-sized. It’s called a “supermoon,” an overzealous way of saying old Luna is larger, brighter, and closer to Earth. Two more supermoons are set to rise on August 10 and September 9.

According to NASA, a supermoon occurs when the moon is full on the same day as its perigee, which is the point in its orbit when it's closest to Earth.

Geoff Chester of the U.S. Naval Observatory said in a statement from NASA that it’s not quite the phenomenon we’d like to believe it is: "Generally speaking, full moons occur near perigee every 13 months and 18 days, so it's not all that unusual.” He goes on to say, "There's a part of me that wishes that this 'super-moon' moniker would just dry up and blow away…”

Still, if you’re looking for the best view on Saturday, July 12, SFGate suggests camping at Marin’s Angel Island and Mount Diablo in the East Bay, or taking a hike at Mount Tamalpais in Marin. If you’re an early bird or night owl, catch the moon at 4:26 a.m. to witness it at 100% peak fullness.

Let’s just hope this doesn’t turn out like April’s Blood Moon, which in San Francisco, was mostly obscured by fog.

[CNN]
[SFGate]

Monday afternoon, the orbit of the International Space Station crossed directly over the 150,000-acre wildfire burning near Yosemite National Park. NASA Astronaut Karen Nyberg snapped this photo from over 200 miles above the Earth.

At one point Monday, the fire grew to become the largest wildfire ever in California. As of Monday afternoon fire crews said the fire was about 15% contained.

Below, additional aerial footage of the fire, from the much lower altitude of 25,000 feet:

Previously: Rim Fire Grows To 234 Square Miles and Counting; SF Power And Water Supplies Threatened
[@AstroKarenN]

Rejoice, interlocking block enthusiasts and fans of infamous NASA mohawk guy: LEGO has just announced that it will be producing a Mars Curiosity Rover replica that children and lovable nerds can erect in the comfort of their own homes.

The LEGO model was created by Stephen Pakbaz, a mechanical engineer who worked on Curiosity at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab and is a LEGO enthusiast. The design reached the final round of LEGO's fan-backed vote and beat out a Portal project and a pretty rad UCS Sandcrawler to get the green light for production.

Pakbaz combined his first-hand experience with his LEGO hobby to create a LEGO model that was as faithful to the actual rover as possible in terms of accuracy, details, and mechanical function, all in the civic-minded name of science:

The primary purpose of this effort has been to contribute to the educational outreach for this incredible mission. It is my hope that this model encourages the public support that is integral to the continued development and exploration of outer space.

No word yet on cost or when the LEGO rover will be available, but we're hoping it'll be here by the holidays so we can win the which-relative-gives-the-coolest-gifts prize from various nieces, nephews and eccentric uncles.

[PC Mag]