— The first astronauts set to fly to the moon in more than 50 years will do so in Integrity.

NASA's Artemis II crew revealed "Integrity" as the name of their Orion spacecraft during a news conference on Wednesday (Sept. 24) at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"We thought as a crew we need to name this spacecraft. We need to have a name for the Orion spacecraft that we're going to ride this magical mission on," said Reid Wiseman, commander of the Artemis II mission.

During Apollo, the previous NASA program to send astronauts to the moon, the crews chose names to distinguish their pair of spacecraft — the command and service module and the lunar module — while they were in separate flight. As later vehicles like NASA's space shuttle orbiters and SpaceX's Dragon capsules became reusable, names were used to help engage the public and impart a sense of character to each craft.

With Artemis, Wiseman wanted a name that would would reflect not just their mission, but what would define their success.

"We're bringing together the world," he said. "We're bringing together an amazing workforce and they are bringing together an amazing vehicle."

Name game

As it turned out, they had no shortage of ideas.

Sequestering themselves in the same facility where they be quarantined prior to leaving for their no later than April 2026 but as soon as Feb. 5 launch, Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen, as well as their backups, Andre Douglas and Jenny Gibbons, found their integrity.

"We had all kinds of things," Koch said in an interview with collectSPACE. "We had sentences, phrases, we had light hearted [monikers], we had mantras. We had names, we had geography. Everything was on the table. We really wanted it to be a completely open forum."

"There were names that I loved," said Wiseman, "there were names that Christina loved. We all had our little pet names."

Whole and undivided

Ultimately, "Integrity" was inspired by something one of their instructors said while on a team building trip to Iceland.

"He coined this for us, and we held on to it," said Hansen, who unlike his NASA crewmates is a Canadian Space Agency astronaut. "It was this idea that you're not a person who has integrity, you're a person who strives to be in integrity. Sometimes you're out of integrity and sometimes you're in your integrity. That was profound for all of us."

For Glover, it boiled down to the definition.

"The Latin root means 'whole.' It's very simple concept and it's about being whole. This crew comes together as pieces — the four of us and our backups — but the six of us make up a whole team. The vehicle, the pieces come together and make up a whole spacecraft," he said.

"What people anecdotally say is that integrity is what you do when no one's watching. That, and truth, honor and integrity matter," said Glover. "There are so many layers to that name and what it means and what it inspires."

Integrating Integrity

Integrity is one of the tenets of the Astronaut Code of Professional Responsibility. It is also one of the Canadian Space Agency's core values.

"We all strive to be in integrity all of the time, but integrity isn't an absolute that you either have or don't have," said Koch. "So this helps us give grace and build trust with each other."

"I hope that people hearing [the name] over the 10 days of the mission appreciate all of the different things that it means, from a whole ship, a whole crew, to a wholeness and wellness that I think humanity just needs. We need to hear more of that togetherness and wholeness," said Glover.

Now that it has been announced, next up is for Integrity to be used as the crew's possible call sign.

"We waited to make sure the whole enterprise was ready for us to announce it before we even used it," said Glover. "I think we'll start using it in sims: 'Houston, Integrity. Integrity, Houston.' That's the plan."

"But if someone doesn't like that, then we won't, and we can say Orion," he said.