Last Update: Apr 04, 2023, 02:39 am IST
The 10-day Artemis II mission will test life-support systems on NASA’s powerful Space Launch System rocket as well as the Orion spacecraft. (Image: NASA Astronaut/Twitter)
The flight, called Artemis II, is scheduled for November 2024.
NASA unveiled the crew Monday for its first manned mission to the Moon in more than 50 years — including the first woman and black person to participate in a lunar flight.
Three Americans and a Canadian will fly around the Moon next year, becoming the first astronauts to venture deep into space since the historic Apollo mission ended in 1972.
The flight, called Artemis II, is scheduled for November 2024 and is the prelude to returning humans to the lunar surface for the first time in half a century.
Artemis II has been named after three NASA astronauts – Reed Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch – have spent time on the International Space Station (ISS), while the Canadian space agency’s Jeremy Hansen will make his first space flight.
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 world’s biggest, most powerful rocket is going to take them farther and higher into the sky,” Nelson said.
Koch, 44, an electrical engineer, holds the record for the longest continuous stay in space by a woman – 11 months – and participated in the first all-female spacewalk while on the ISS.
“Am I excited?” said the coach. “Absolutely!”
Wiseman, 47, a US Navy fighter pilot who previously served as NASA’s chief astronaut, was named commander of the Artemis II mission, in which the spacecraft will orbit the moon but not land on it.
Glover, 46, a naval aviator and the first black man to spend time as a crew member on the ISS, will be the pilot for the flight.
The 47-year-old fighter pilot will serve as a coach and mission specialist for Hansen in the Canadian Armed Forces.
– Mars by 2040 –
François-Philippe Champagne, Canada’s Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, attended the event and said that his country “could not be more proud” to have a Canadian on the crew for the flight.
As part of the Artemis program, NASA aims to send astronauts to the Moon in 2025 – more than five decades after the last Apollo mission.
In addition to sending the first woman and first person of color to the Moon, the US space agency hopes to establish a permanent human presence on the lunar surface and eventually launch a journey to Mars.
NASA chief Nelson has said that he hopes to have a crewed mission to Mars by the year 2040.
The 10-day Artemis II mission will test life-support systems on NASA’s powerful Space Launch System rocket as well as the Orion spacecraft.
The first Artemis flight wrapped up in December with an unmanned Orion capsule returning safely to Earth after a 25-day journey around the Moon.
During the trip to the Earth orbiting satellite and back, Orion penetrated 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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