On April 3, the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced the names of the astronauts who will orbit the Moon in 2024, marking the beginning of human return to the lunar surface for the first time in half a century.
According to NASA’s announcement, the crew participating in the mission named Artemis II will include three Americans and one Canadian.
Earth viewed from the Moon. (Image credit: NASA).
The three NASA astronauts – Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch – all have experience working on the International Space Station (ISS), while Jeremy Hansen from the Canadian Space Agency will be making his first flight into space. Notably, astronaut Koch, 44, an electrical engineer who participated in the first all-female spacewalk while on the ISS, will be the first woman to orbit the Moon.
According to NASA’s announcement, Reid Wiseman, 47, a U.S. Navy pilot and former NASA chief astronaut, has been appointed as the commander of the Artemis II mission, which is scheduled for November 2024 with the crew flying around the Moon but not landing. Meanwhile, Glover, 46, also a Navy pilot and the first African American to serve as a crew member on the ISS, will serve as the pilot for the flight.
Koch, the only woman on the Artemis II crew, and Hansen, a 47-year-old pilot in the Canadian Armed Forces, will act as mission specialists.
The Artemis II mission, lasting 10 days, will test NASA’s rocket launch systems in space as well as the life support systems on the Orion spacecraft. As part of the Artemis program, NASA aims to land astronauts on the Moon by 2025 — more than five decades after the historic Apollo missions concluded in 1972.
In addition to sending the first woman and the first person of color to the Moon, NASA hopes to establish a lasting human presence on the lunar surface and eventually initiate a journey to Mars, anticipated to take place around 2040.
