Category : Science and TechPublished on: April 05 2023
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The US space agency NASA has named the four astronauts who will take human back to the Moon, after a 50-year gap.
Christina Koch will become the first woman astronaut ever assigned to a lunar mission, while Victor Glover will be the first black astronaut on one.
They will join Reid Wiseman and Jeremy Hansen to fly a capsule around the Moon late next year or early in 2025.
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.
The three Americans and one Canadian will become the first astronauts to venture that deep into space since the historic Apollo missions ended in 1972.
Reid Wiseman (47): A US Navy pilot who served for a time as the head of Nasa's astronaut office. He's flown one previous space mission, to the International Space station in 2015.
Victor Glover (46): A US Navy test pilot. He joined NASA in 2013 and made his first spaceflight in 2020. He was the first African American to stay on the space station for an extended period of six months.
Christina Koch (44): An electrical engineer. She holds the record for longest continuous time in space by a woman, of 328 days. With NASA astronaut Jessica Meir she participated in the first all-female spacewalk in October 2019.
Jeremy Hansen (47): Before joining the Canadian Space Agency, he was a fighter pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force. He has yet to fly in space.
Artemis 2 is the second scheduled mission of NASA's Artemis program, and the first scheduled crewed mission of NASA's Orion spacecraft, currently planned to be launched by the Space Launch System (SLS) in November 2024.