On Monday (April 3) NASA has named its first astronaut crew bound for the moon in more than 50 years, on its Artemis 2 ,10-day mission in late 2024. The crew includes commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen. Hansen is a Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut flying under an agreement between the U.S. and Canada. He will be the first non-American to leave Earth orbit and fly to the moon. The four Artemis 2 crew members were selected from the current active corps of 41 NASA astronauts and four CSA astronauts. “There are three words that we keep saying in the Artemis program and they are, “We are going.” And I want everyone to say them,” said Wiseman.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and other agency leaders were joined at the event at Ellington Field, home to NASA’s aircraft operations located near the Johnson Space Center, by almost all of the members of the active astronaut corps. “Together, we will usher in a new era of exploration for a new generation of star sailors and dreamers — the Artemis Generation,” Bill Nelson said. During Artemis 2 mission Orion will use its European-built service module to perform multiple maneuvers to raise its orbit around Earth and eventually place the crew on a lunar free return trajectory in which Earth’s gravity will naturally pull the spacecraft back home. The cew will also their ability to manually fly Orion and the spacecraft’s life support, communication and navigation systems.
