The team includes one woman and three men and was introduced during a televised ceremony from Houston, home to the nation’s astronauts as well as Mission Control. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson called the four astronauts “humanity’s crew.”
The three Americans and one Canadian will be the first crew to fly NASA’s Orion capsule, launching atop a Space Launch System rocket from Kennedy Space Center no earlier than late 2024. However, they will not land or even go into lunar orbit. Instead, they will fly around the moon and head straight back to Earth. This mission will be a prelude to a lunar landing by two others a year later.
The crew comprises the mission’s commander, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, an African American naval aviator, Christina Koch, who holds the world record for the longest spaceflight by a woman, and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen. All are space veterans except for Hansen.
“This is a big day. We have a lot to celebrate and it’s so much more than the four names that have been announced,” said Mr. Glover. This is the first moon crew to include a woman and someone not from the US, and the first crew in NASA’s new moon program named Artemis.
NASA aims to land two astronauts on the moon by 2025 or so, provided this next ten-day moonshot goes well. During Apollo, NASA sent 24 astronauts to the moon from 1968 through 1972, twelve of whom landed. All were military-trained test pilots, except for Apollo 17’s Harrison Schmitt, a geologist who closed out that moon landing era alongside the late Gene Cernan.
NASA picked from 41 active astronauts for its first Artemis crew, and Canada had four candidates. This mission has generated much excitement around the world, as efforts to explore and potentially colonize the moon continue to gain momentum. With a mixture of seasoned space veterans and fresh talent, there is no doubt that this crew will achieve great things as they journey through the mysteries of space.
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