NASA has unveiled the crew for its first human mission to the moon in more than 50 years, including the first woman and Black man to voyage into deep space.
Christina Koch, a NASA astronaut and holder
of the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman, will be a mission
specialist on next year’s Artemis II flight around the moon.
Victor Glover, a naval aviator, will pilot
the Orion spacecraft that circles the moon in November 2024, becoming the first
Black man to take part in a lunar mission. Veteran NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman,
the mission commander, and Jeremy Hansen, a former fighter pilot now with the
Canadian Space Agency, will also join the crew.
The four astronauts, dressed in blue flight
suits, were introduced by NASA administrator Bill Nelson at an event at the
Johnson Space Center in Houston. “The largest, most powerful rocket in the
world is going to propel them onward and upward into the heavens,” Nelson said.
The Artemis II flight is a prelude to returning humans to the moon for the
first time in a half century and an eventual mission to Mars.
“Am I excited? Absolutely!” said Koch, an
electrical engineer who spent a record 11 consecutive months in space and took
part in the first all-female spacewalks while on the International Space
Station.
Glover said Artemis II is “more than a
mission to the moon and back.” “It is the next step that gets humanity to
Mars,” he said. Wiseman said the diverse crew was made up of “exceptional
operators.” “We’re just all professional explorers,” he told AFP. “We are
representing our nation, but we need the entire world to go along with us.”
As part of the Artemis program, NASA aims to
send astronauts to the moon in 2025, more than five decades after the final
Apollo mission.
Besides putting the first woman and first
person of colour on the moon, the US space agency hopes to establish a lasting
human presence on the lunar surface as a stepping stone for an eventual voyage
to Mars.
Francois-Philippe Champagne, Canada’s
minister of innovation, science and industry, attended the event and said his
country “could not be more proud” to have a Canadian on the crew for the
flight.
The 10-day Artemis II mission will test
NASA’s powerful Space Launch System rocket as well as the life-support systems
aboard the Orion spacecraft. The first Artemis flight wrapped up in December
with an uncrewed Orion capsule returning safely to Earth after a 25-day journey
around the moon.
During the trip around Earth’s orbiting satellite and back, Orion logged well over a million miles (1.6 million kilometers) and went farther from Earth than any previous habitable spacecraft.
Only 12 people—all of them white men—have set foot on the moon.
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