[2][3] The Citronaut was designed by Norman Van Meter, the brother-in-law of FTU's then-president Charles N. Millican in an attempt to combine the two major themes of Central Florida at the time: the citrus industry, and the space program.

Florida produces approximately 100 million boxes of citrus annually,[4] and FTU was founded in 1963 to provide personnel to support NASA at the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

[1] The Citronaut was largely dormant until The UCF Baseball team developed a retro uniform in 2014 that featured the Citronaut which started a powerful renaissance of the original mascot.

As of 2022, “Naut” an abbreviation of Citronaut has been promoted by the UCF Athletics social media department and numerous officially licensed Citronaut and “Naut” clothing and merchandise items have become available for sale to the public.

Since 2014, the Citronaut has experienced a renaissance in university publications, athletics programing, and merchandise.