The United States Space Agency (NASA) has unveiled the crew of four for its upcoming lunar mission, a team that includes the first woman, first person of color and first Canadian assigned to a lunar mission.
At a ceremony Monday in Houston, Texas, NASA announced that Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Hammock Koch and Jeremy Hansen would crew the Artemis II mission for a 10-day flight, the agency’s first manned lunar journey in more than half a century. .
“For the first time in more than 50 years, these individuals — the Artemis II crew — will be the first humans to fly near the moon,” Vanessa Wyche, director of the Johnson Space Center, said in a statement.
The launch, scheduled for 2024, will be only the second in the Artemis program, a multinational initiative to establish a “long-term presence on the moon.” The last time a manned crew approached the moon was in 1972, as part of NASA’s Apollo program.
“This mission paves the way for the expansion of human exploration of deep space and opens up new opportunities for scientific discovery, commercial, industrial and academic partnerships,” said Wyche.
She called the crew “the best in mankind”. Among them are three US aerospace veterans: Wisemen, Glover and Koch.
All three make their second space trip on the Artemis flight.
Koch has previously made headlines for achieving several “firsts” in space. As a flight engineer, she holds the record for the longest single space flight performed by a woman and participated in the first all-female spacewalks.
Meanwhile, Glover will become the first person of color to take part in a lunar voyage. A former legislator of the US Senate, he recently piloted the 2021 SpaceX Crew-1 mission and served as the flight’s second-in-command.
The third American, Wiseman, has served as a flight engineer on the International Space Station, spent 165 days in orbit and logged nearly 13 hours as a lead spacewalker.
The Americans are joined by the first Canadian astronaut to take part in a lunar flight, Jeremy Hansen. The Ontario-born former fighter pilot will make his first trip to space after a career as a colonel in the Canadian Forces.
In a speech accompanying Monday’s announcement, Hansen praised “Canada’s can-do attitude” for joining the mission, as well as its “passion for working together” across borders.
“It has not escaped any of us that the United States could choose to go back to the moon itself. But America has made a very conscious choice over the past few decades to build a global team, and that, by my definition, is true leadership,” he said.
The four-member team is expected to cover more than 2.2 million kilometers (1.4 million miles) as they orbit the moon, marking the closest approach to the moon since the Apollo 17 mission.
The American crew members were chosen from a pool of 41 active astronauts, while Canada initially nominated four candidates. In the wake of Monday’s announcement, US President Joe Biden called the astronauts to congratulate and thank them for their services.
While their journey won’t include a lunar walk, the Artemis II journey will take them 370,000 km (230,000 miles) beyond Earth’s surface, a significant departure from decades past when NASA focused on crewed exploration in low Earth orbit.
By comparison, the International Space Station is only 420 km (260 mi) above the Earth’s surface.
While in space, the four astronauts will demonstrate maneuvers and test life support systems aboard the partially reusable Orion spacecraft, a capsule designed for crewed flight.
If their mission proves successful, NASA plans to launch a third Artemis flight, which will include a landing on the lunar surface.
That Artemis III mission is also expected to have a female astronaut and a colored astronaut on board. Previously, all 12 members of the Apollo program to set foot on the moon were white men.
Glover addressed issues of unity and division in his remarks in Houston on Monday. “I pray that God will bless this mission,” said the Artemis II crew member. “But I also pray that we can continue to serve as an inspiration for cooperation and peace, not just between nations but within our own country.”
The Artemis program is a joint initiative of US, Canadian, Japanese and European aviation agencies.
The first unmanned mission started in November 2022 after several months of delay. It successfully completed two lunar flights before crashing into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California.
As with the first Artemis mission, the manned crew announced Monday will lift off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida in the US.
NASA said lessons from the upcoming Artemis flights would help the agency prepare for its “next big leap: sending the first astronauts to Mars.
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“The Artemis II crew represents thousands of people working tirelessly to take us to the stars,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, a former astronaut and senator, said in the agency’s statement.
“Together we usher in a new era of exploration for a new generation of star sailors and dreams – the Artemis generation.”