A second grader's plushie is going to the Moon!
ORLANDO, FL / ACCESS Newswire / March 27, 2026 / Freelancer (ASX:FLN)(OTCQX:FLNCF), the world's largest freelancing and crowdsourcing marketplace, today congratulates Lucas Ye of Mountain View, California, whose design "Rise" has been chosen by the crew of NASA's Artemis II mission as their Zero Gravity Indicator.
The announcement was made by Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman and his fellow team members at Kennedy Space Center in Florida today, ahead of a launch window that opens on 1 April 2026. The crew personally participated in selecting their stowaway from a shortlist of 25 finalists.
"Rise" - a round white plush with a hat featuring the Earth and a galaxy-and-rockets brim - was inspired by the iconic Earthrise photograph taken during Apollo 8, a moment Koch noted mirrors the spirit of the Artemis II mission itself.
The design was selected from more than 2,600 entries submitted across more than 50 countries through the Moon Mascot: NASA Artemis II ZGI Design Challenge, a contest facilitated by Freelancer on behalf of NASA. Entries came from adults, K-12 classrooms, and individual students.
The five finalist designs were:
"Big Steps of Little Octopus," Anzhelika Iudakova, Finland
"Corey the Explorer," Daniela Colina, Peru
"Creation Mythos," Johanna Beck, McPherson, Kansas
"Lepus the Moon Rabbit," Oakville Trafalgar High School, Canada
"Rise," Lucas Ye, Mountain View, California (winner)
Wiseman also revealed that a micro SD card containing the names of everyone who registered for the challenge will be stored inside Rise for the flight.
Trisha Epp, Director of Innovation at Freelancer and head of its NASA partnership programs, said: "The judging panel had a really tough time with this one. You'd open a submission, and it'd be from a student in Finland, or a science storyteller in Germany, or a child in Texas who clearly spent weeks getting every detail right. Every entry brought something personal to it - you could tell how much this meant to people. It was a privilege to see that kind of passion and creativity come through."
"On behalf of everyone at Freelancer, congratulations to the winner - what an incredible achievement. Your design is literally going to space, which is not a sentence most people get to say. Freelancer is delighted to work alongside NASA on this and so many other projects where we're putting our platform - more than 87 million users strong - to work finding solutions to some of NASA's trickiest problems. The 'Moon Mascot' challenge is a beautiful example of what that looks like."
The Moon Mascot: NASA Artemis II ZGI Design Challenge is one of dozens of projects Freelancer has facilitated on behalf of NASA. In June 2025, Freelancer was one of 25 companies awarded the NASA Open Innovation Services 3 contract.
All businesses are now able to take advantage of the same crowdsourcing problem-solving platform that NASA has used to effectively, via the Moonshot Innovation Program: https://www.freelancer.com/innovation
For more information, contact:
Media Inquiries
Brent O'Halloran
Director of Communications
press@freelancer.com | +1 (650) 442 3334
SOURCE: Freelancer
View the original press release on ACCESS Newswire:
https://www.accessnewswire.com/newsroom/en/computers-technology-and-internet/%22rise%22-selected-as-nasa-artemis-ii-moon-mascot-1152819
