Who are the four astronauts who will travel around the moon on NASA’s Artemis II mission?
The crew is made up of highly experienced astronauts with extensive backgrounds in spaceflight and flight testing.
On April 1, four astronauts are scheduled to travel to the Moon on a mission lasting about 10 days as part of NASA’s Artemis II mission. They will fly aboard the Orion spacecraft. The mission marks a historic milestone, as no humans have returned to the Moon since 1972.
The four-person crew has spent the past three years training after being assigned to the mission in 2023. Since March 18, they have been in quarantine. The mission is not intended to land on the lunar surface. Instead, its purpose is to test the spacecraft’s life-support systems with humans on board, paving the way for a new era of lunar exploration.
The four astronauts taking part in the Artemis II mission are:
Reid Wiseman
Reid Wiseman, 50, will serve as the mission commander. A U.S. Navy test pilot, he was selected as an astronaut in 2009 and later became NASA’s Chief of the Astronaut Office before this mission. In 2014, he spent 165 days aboard the International Space Station after launching on a Soyuz spacecraft.
“It’d be a lot easier to just sit on my couch and watch football for the weekend, but at the same time, there’s four humans that were put in a position to be able to go explore and do something that is very unique and rare in this civilization,” Wiseman told NBC’s Today.
Victor Glover
Victor Glover, 49, will serve as the mission pilot and will become the first Black astronaut to travel into the vicinity of the Moon. In 2020, he spent 168 days in space as part of Crew-1, the first operational mission of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule to the International Space Station. Before joining NASA, he flew more than 40 different aircraft in the U.S. Navy, including combat and test missions.
Christina Koch
Christina Koch, 47, will become the first woman to travel into the vicinity of the Moon. In 2019, she set the record for the longest continuous spaceflight by a woman, spending 328 days in orbit. During that mission, she and Jessica Meir carried out NASA’s first all-female spacewalk. Koch is an electrical engineer and physicist and has also taken part in research expeditions in Antarctica.
Jeremy Hansen
Jeremy Hansen, 50, will make his first spaceflight after being selected as an astronaut in 2009. He will become the first non-American astronaut to travel beyond Earth orbit toward the Moon, as part of the collaborative partnership between the United States and Canada.
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