In A Historic Move, NASA Names First Woman, Black Man As Astronauts For Its Moon Mission

The US space agency NASA has named the four astronauts who will take humanity back to the Moon after a 50-year gap. The historic crew assigned by NASA includes the first woman and the first African American ever assigned as astronauts to a lunar mission.

AP

First woman, black man picked for lunar mission

Christina Koch, 44, is the first woman astronaut ever assigned to such a mission, while Victor Glover will be the first black astronaut on one.

Koch, an engineer who already holds the record for 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.

They will join Reid Wiseman and Jeremy Hansen to fly a capsule around the Moon late next year or early in 2025. The astronauts won't land on the Moon, but their mission will pave the way for a touchdown by a subsequent crew.

AP

NASA's promise to bring greater diversity

The three US citizens and one Canadian were presented to the public in a ceremony in Houston, Texas. They will now begin a period of intense training to get themselves ready.

By selecting a woman and a person of colour, NASA is keeping its promise to bring greater diversity to its exploration efforts. All the previous crewed missions to the Moon were made by white men.

"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."

Reuters

About Artemis II

Artemis II will mark the debut crewed flight - but not the first lunar landing - 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.

The kickoff Artemis I mission was successfully completed in December 2022, capping the inaugural launch of NASA's powerful next-generation mega-rocket and its newly built Orion spacecraft on an uncrewed test flight that lasted 25 days.

The objective of the 10-day, 1.4-million-mile (2.3-million-km) Artemis II journey around the moon and back is to demonstrate that all of Orion's life-support apparatus and other systems will operate as designed with astronauts aboard in deep space.

AP

Artemis II will venture some 6,400 miles (10,300 km) beyond the moon's far side before returning, marking the closest pass humans have made to Earth's natural satellite since Apollo 17, which carried Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt to the lunar surface in December 1972.

At its farthest distance from Earth, Artemis II is expected to reach a point more than 230,000 miles (370,000 km) away. The typical low-Earth orbit altitude of the International Space Station is about 250 miles (420 km) above the planet.

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