US space agency Nasa has named four astronauts who will return humanity to the Moon, after a 50-year hiatus.
Christina Koch will become the first female astronaut on a mission to the moon, while Victor Glover will be the first black astronaut to do so.
They will join Reid Wiseman and Jeremy Hansen in flying a capsule around the Moon late next year or early 2025.
Astronauts won’t land on the Moon, but their mission will pave the way for a next crewed landing
Three US citizens and one Canadian were introduced to the public at a ceremony in Houston, Texas.
They will now begin a period of intense training in preparation. By choosing one woman and one person of colour,
NASA is fulfilling its promise to bring more diversity to its exploration efforts. All previous crewed missions to the Moon were performed by whites.
CREW MEMBERS
Reid Wiseman (47): A US Navy pilot who served for a time as the head of Nasa’s astronaut office. He’s flown one previous space mission, to the International Space station in 2015.
Victor Glover (46): A US Navy test pilot. He joined Nasa in 2013 and made his first spaceflight in 2020. He was the first African American to stay on the space station for an extended period of six months.
Christina Koch (44): An electrical engineer. She holds the record for the longest continuous time in space by a woman, 328 days. Nasa astronaut Jessica Meir participated in the first all-female spacewalk in October 2019.
Jeremy Hansen (47): Before joining the Canadian Space Agency, he was a fighter pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force. He has yet to fly in space.
“The Artemis-2 crew represents thousands of people working tirelessly to bring us to the stars.
This is their crew, this is our crew, this is humanity’s crew,” said Nasa Administrator Bill Nelson.
“Nasa astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Hammock Koch, and CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen, each has their own story, but, together, they represent our creed: E pluribus unum – out of many, one.
Together, we are ushering in a new era of exploration for a new generation of star sailors and dreamers – the Artemis Generation.”
This Artemis-1 mission left Earth on a 25-day excursion around the Moon without anyone on board. This allowed engineers to assess the readiness of the hardware.
Now, the newly named astronauts will climb into Orion for Artemis-2 and a journey to and from the Moon that’s likely to take about 10 days.
The last human spaceflight mission to the Moon was Apollo 17 in December 1972. The first landing was on Apollo 11 in 1969.
Artemis-3, the first landing of the new era, is not expected to occur until at least 12 months after Artemis-2.