NASA has named the four astronauts who will take part in the first manned flight to the moon in 50 years – with Christiane Koch as the first female astronaut for a lunar mission and Victor Glover as the first black astronaut.
They will be joined by Reed Wiseman and Jeremy Hansen as their flight around the moon is scheduled to take place in 2025, which will pave the way for future crew landings.
The three US citizens and one Canadian were introduced to the public at a ceremony in Houston, Texas.
They will now begin a phase of intensive training in preparation.
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By choosing a woman and a person of color, NASA is fulfilling its promise to diversify its research efforts. All previous manned missions to the moon have been carried out by white men.
Victor Glover (46) is a US Navy test pilot. He joined NASA in 2013 and made his first space flight in 2020. He was the first African American to remain on the space station for an extended period of six months.
Now the newly appointed astronauts will ascend to Orion for Artemis-2 and a round trip to the moon expected to take about 10 days.
The last manned space flight to the moon was Apollo 17 in December 1972. The first landing was Apollo 11 in 1969.
The landing of Artemis-3, the first New Age landing, is not expected to occur for at least 12 months after Artemis-2.
NASA still doesn’t have a system that could take astronauts to the lunar surface. This was developed by SpaceX for the entrepreneur Elon Musk.
The vehicle, dubbed Starship, is scheduled to begin flight testing in the coming weeks.
