NASA Astronauts Will Return to the Moon After a 50-year Gap
- NASA
"NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Hammock Koch, and CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen, each has their own story, but, together, they represent our creed: E pluribus unum - out of many, one. Together, we are ushering in a new era of exploration for a new generation of star sailors and dreamers - the Artemis Generation."
Wiseman will be the commander; Glover will be his pilot; Koch and Hansen will act as the supporting "mission specialists".
The quartet is essentially repeating the 1968 mission carried out by Apollo 8, which was the first human spaceflight to reach the Moon.
Its crew took the famous "Earthrise" picture that showed our home planet emerging from behind the lunar horizon.
The major difference this time will be the use of the 21st Century technology that Nasa has developed under its Artemis program. In Greek mythology, Artemis was the twin sister of Apollo.
Last year, the agency tested its next-generation Moon rocket, called the Space Launch System, and its associated crew capsule, known as Orion.
This Artemis-1 mission left Earth on a 25-day excursion around the Moon without anyone on board. This allowed engineers to assess the readiness of the hardware.
Now, the newly named astronauts will climb into Orion for Artemis-2 and a journey to and from the Moon that's likely to take about 10 days.
The last human spaceflight mission to the Moon was Apollo 17 in December 1972. The first landing was on Apollo 11 in 1969.
Artemis-3, the first landing of the new era, is not expected to occur until at least 12 months after Artemis-2.
NASA doesn't yet have a system capable of taking astronauts down to the lunar surface. This is being developed by entrepreneur Elon Musk's SpaceX company. It will be a variant of his Starship vehicle, which is due to start flight testing in the next few weeks.
