Four astronauts — three men and one woman — have been selected for the first crewed mission to the Moon in more than 50 years. As expected, the crew also features a Canadian, who will become the first non-U.S. citizen to venture past Earth orbit.
On Monday, NASA revealed the identities of the four-person crew for the Artemis 2 mission: NASA astronauts Victor Glover, who will serve as pilot for the mission, Christina Koch, Reid Wiseman as mission specialists, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen as mission commander. The four astronauts will ride on board the Orion capsule for a trip to the Moon scheduled for sometime in 2024.
The crew of astronauts was announced during a live event at NASA’s Johnson Space Centre’s Ellington Field in Houston, Texas.
“We’ve made many giant leaps in the past 60 years, fulfilling [former U.S.] President [John F.] Kennedy’s goal of landing a person on the Moon and today, we stand on the shoulders of giants as we reach farther into the stars and push forward to the Moon once again and onto Mars,” Vanessa Wyche, director of the NASA Johnson Space Centre, said during the event.
NASA’s lunar program kicked off in November 2022, launching the Orion capsule for a 25-day trip to the Moon and back. Artemis 2 is the second mission, but the first mission to carry a crew to the Moon since the days of Apollo.
The Artemis 2 crew astronauts will not land on the Moon, instead embark on a 10-day day journey that will take them to the far side of the Moon at a distance of about 370,149 km away from Earth.
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