Washington DC: In a first, NASA on Monday announced that the four-member space crew of its lunar mission Artemis II will comprise a woman and Black astronauts. The Artemis II would be the first manned space voyage around the moon in more than five decades.
Christina Koch, an engineer who holds the record for the longest continuous spaceflight by a woman and was part of NASA’s first three all-female spacewalks, was named as a mission specialist for the Artemis II lunar flyby expected early next year.
Koch will be joined by Victor Glover, a US Navy aviator and veteran of four spacewalks who NASA has designated as pilot of Artemis II. He will be the first Black astronaut ever to be sent on a lunar mission.
Others in the four-member crew are Jeremy Hansen, a Royal Canadian Air Force colonel and the first Canadian ever chosen for a flight to the moon, as a mission specialist, and Reid Wiseman, another former US Navy fighter pilot, named Artemis II mission commander.
All three NASA astronauts selected for the Artemis II mission are veterans of previous expeditions aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Only Hansen is a spaceflight rookie.
NASA introduced the Artemis II quartet at a pep rally-like event attended by journalists, local elementary school students and space industry leaders. The event was televised from Houston at the Johnson Space Center, NASA’s mission control base.
“The Artemis II crew represents thousands of people working tirelessly to bring us to the stars,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said on stage. “This is humanity’s crew.”
Artemis II will mark the debut crewed flight of an Apollo successor program aimed at returning astronauts to the moon’s surface later this decade and ultimately establishing a sustainable outpost there as a stepping stone to future human exploration of Mars.
