NASA named three Americans and one Canadian as the astronauts who will fly around the moon as part of the Artemis II space expedition.
The crew will include NASA's Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Reid Wiseman; and the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen.
- Wiseman will be the commander of the Artemis II vessel and Glover will be the pilot.
- The
47-year-old Wiseman served as the Chief of NASA's Astronaut Office from
December 2020 to November 2022, when he stepped down so that he could
be a part of the active astronaut rotation.
- In 2021, Glover became the first African-American to spend a whole six-month stint at International Space Station (ISS) and piloted the first operational flight of SpaceX's Dragon 2 capsule to the ISS.
- In 2020, Koch set a new record for the longest spaceflight by a woman after spending 328 days in space.
- Hansen, who earned his private pilot license at the age of 17, will be the first Canadian to go to the moon.
- The
Artemis II mission, which is slated for November 2024 at the earliest,
will be the first crewed mission to the moon in more than half a
century.
- The spacecraft will fly around the moon but will not touch down.
