NASA and the Canadian Space Agency recently announced the crew members for the Artemis II mission, which will take humans to the vicinity of the moon for the first time in more than 50 years. The four-member crew includes three NASA astronauts and one Canadian astronaut, among them the first woman and the first black person to crew a moon mission.
Meet the crew members of Artemis II mission
Crew members of Artemis II mission |
Christina Koch, Mission Specialist:
Christina Koch, 44, from Grand Rapids, Mich., will be the first woman to orbit the moon. Koch got her start at NASA's Goddard Space Center. She made history by logging the longest continuous spaceflight by a woman (328 days) and took part in the first all-woman space walk in 2019.
Victor Glover Jr., Pilot:
Victor Glover, 46, from Pomona, Calif., is a former Navy captain who most recently served as pilot and second-in-command on the SpaceX Crew Dragon in 2021. He will be the first Black man to fly on a moon mission.
G. Reid Wiseman, Mission Commander:
Wiseman, who is 47 and from Baltimore, served as a flight engineer in 2014 aboard the International Space Station on a 165-day mission, his first spaceflight.
Jeremy Hansen, Mission Specialist:
Hansen, a 47-year-old from Ontario, is the only non-American crew member, and the fact is keenly aware of him. "It is not lost on any of us that the United States could choose to go back to the moon by themselves," Hansen said Monday. "But America has made a very deliberate choice over decades to curate a global team — and that, in my definition, is true leadership."
Mission objective of Artemis II
The mission of the Artemis II will be to test the "foundational human deep space capabilities" of the Space Launch System rocket and the Orion spacecraft with a crew on board. The 10-day trip, slated to begin no earlier than the end of 2024, will intentionally "stress the Orion spacecraft's life-support systems to prove the capabilities and techniques required to live and work in deep space in ways only humans can do."
The mission won't land on the moon, but if all goes well, their work will pave the way for a touchdown by a subsequent crew. The Artemis II mission is part of NASA's vision for future deep space exploration, what the agency has dubbed the "moon to Mars" exploration approach.
NASA's plan to go to Mars
NASA says the Artemis II mission is a demonstration of the agency's ability to push the boundaries of human achievement. "It's a testament to the unwavering passion of the team that will make it possible. And it's a message to the world: We choose to go back to the moon and then on to Mars," said NASA Director Bill Nelson.
"It is the next step on the journey that gets humanity to Mars," Glover added. "And we understand our role in that." NASA has been planning to send humans to Mars for years and is committed to making it happen. The agency's goal is to send humans to the red planet by the 2030s.
Overview of the mission
The Artemis II mission is an important step towards achieving NASA's goal of sending humans to Mars. The crew members are experienced and capable astronauts, and their mission will test the limits of the spacecraft and systems that will be used to travel to deep space. The successful completion of this mission will pave the way for future crews to land on the moon and eventually travel to Mars. NASA's commitment to exploring deep space and pushing the boundaries of human achievement is a testament to the spirit of human curiosity and determination.
