Nasa Unveils First Moon Crew in 50 Years

Three Americans and a Canadian will fly around the Moon next year as a precursor to sending people back to the lunar surface for the first time in fifty years, according to a Monday announcement by Nasa.

The Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen will be making his first space journey, while the three NASA astronauts named to the Artemis II mission, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, have all spent time on the International Space Station.

The first woman to fly around the Moon will be Koch, a 44-year-old electrical engineer who took part in the first all-female spacewalks while on board the International Space Station. At a gathering at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, NASA administrator Bill Nelson introduced the four astronauts who were wearing blue flight suits.

Nelson stated that they will be carried into the heavens by the biggest, most potent rocket in the planet.

"We decide to return to the Moon before moving on to Mars." Wiseman, a 47-year-old US Navy fighter pilot who formerly held the position of NASA's chief astronaut, was chosen to lead the Artemis II mission, which is slated to launch in November 2024 and involve the crew circumnavigating the Moon without making an actual landing.

The flight's pilot will be 46-year-old Glover, a navy aviator and the first man of African descent to serve as a crew member on the International Space Station. As mission experts, Koch—the sole female crew member of Artemis II—and Hansen, a 47-year-old fighter pilot in the Canadian military, will work together.

More than five decades after the illustrious Apollo missions came to an end in 1972, NASA plans to send men to the Moon as part of the Artemis programme in 2025.

The US space agency wants to establish a lasting human presence on the lunar surface and eventually undertake a mission to Mars in addition to sending the first woman and first person of colour to the Moon.

The head of NASA, Nelson, has stated that a crewed expedition to Mars is anticipated by the year 2040. The robust Space Launch System rocket from NASA as well as the Orion spacecraft's life support systems will be put to the test during the 10-day Artemis II mission.

An unmanned Orion capsule returned to Earth safely in December after completing the first Artemis flight's 25-day circumnavigation of the Moon. Orion travelled a distance from Earth greater than any previous habitable spacecraft—well over 1.6 million kilometers—during its trek around the planet's orbiting satellite and returned. The Moon has only been visited by 12 humans, all of whom are white men.