Campos is a NASA dummy heading to the moon.

The name is dedicated to Arturo Campos, a Mexican-American electrical engineer at NASA who played a key role in bringing the surviving Apollo 13 crew back safely in the 1970s, according to NASA.

Because they had hundreds of thousands of miles. The mission control team at the Johnson Space Center had to come up with a quick way to send astronauts back to Earth. While conserving energy, water and heat, according to a NASA Tumblr post, their eventual successful strategy was based on contingency plans that Campos had pre-written and then modified for emergencies.

The mannequins are also tested in emergency situations. including whether the astronauts were able to escape safely from their seats. If they were submerged after the splash, Jason Hutt, NASA’s lead in the integration of Orion Crew Systems, said in a statement.

From humble goals…

Born in Laredo, Texas in 1934, Campos grew up at a time when obtaining an engineering degree was not common to people of Hispanic background, according to NASA.

With no plans for higher education, Campos thought he might become a mechanic like his father, according to NASA, before high school chemistry and physics teacher Josephine “Grandma” Baird realized. His potential and motivated him to attend junior high school classes and work at his father’s shop. which eventually led him to graduate from the University of Texas as an electrician. Engineering degree in 1956

Campos supervised aircraft maintenance at Kelly Air Force Base in Texas before joining NASA in the early 1960s.

… to astronomical success

Campos has supported his skills on NASA projects such as power systems for spacecraft such as the Apollo moon module. This includes the system used for the first lunar landing in 1969, according to NASA.

Campos fell asleep when he received an emergency call about Apollo 13 from NASA colleagues on April 13, 1970, NASA reported, as astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise were stranded in about 200,000 endangered spacecraft. Miles from Earth, an engineer on the ground used a contingency plan adapted by Campos that he originally wrote with the exact situation in mind.

Instructions for implementing the corrective steps were sent to Mission Control. which was passed on to the astronauts

“The whole process took about 15 hours,” according to NASA, “and ultimately Enough power was also switched from the lunar module’s power source to the command and service module’s emergency battery. to heat the astronauts Travel back home and help them land safely on Earth.

“If not for the steps that Campos and his colleagues took together. It is likely that the Apollo 13 mission will not be remembered as ‘Failed to succeed’ as it is today.”

Former President Richard Nixon awarded Campos and other mission control officials a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1970 after retiring from NASA in 1980 and consulting in electrical engineering. Campos died in 2004 of a heart attack.