ORLANDO, Fla. — Humans haven’t traveled beyond low-Earth orbit in more than 50 years, but that’s set to change with the launch of the Artemis II mission to orbit the moon next year with four passengers on board. Just who will be flying was revealed today.
NASA and the Canadian Space Agency named the four astronauts that will climb aboard the Orion spacecraft to be launched atop the Space Launch System rocket from Kennedy Space Center as early as November 2024.
Commanding the mission will be Reid Wiseman, the former head of NASA’s astronaut office who stepped down to be eligible to fly on missions again. He will be joined by NASA astronaut Victor Glover, who will act as pilot, NASA astronaut and mission specialist Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen.
Wiseman, Koch and Glover each have one spaceflight under their belts while Hansen is the lone rookie.
Wiseman, 47, was born in Baltimore. He was chosen as part of the 2009 class of astronaut candidates, and flew on a 165-day mission to the ISS during Expedition 41 in 2014.
Koch, 44, was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She was chosen as part of the 2013 class of astronaut candidates. She holds the record for an American woman for continuous time in space when she spent 328 days aboard the International Space Station during Expeditions 59, 60 and 61 from 2019-2020.
Glover, 46, who was born in Pomona, California was also part of the 2013 astronaut class. He was pilot of the first operational flight of the SpaceX Crew Dragon launching from Kennedy Space Center on the Crew-1 mission in November 2020 for a 168-day trip to the ISS. He goes by the nickname Ike, given by fellow astronauts as an acronym for “I Know Everything.”
Hansen, 47, who was born in London, Ontario, named a CSA astronaut in 2009 after piloting fighters for the Royal Canadian Air Force.
NASA will live stream the announcement at 11 a.m. on NASA TV and its social media channels from NASA Johnson Space Center’s Ellington Field in Houston.
The mission will take the quartet will fly to the moon, but not land. It won’t be until Artemis III that humans will return to the lunar surface, and that mission is slated for December 2025, but reliant on SpaceX completing a version of its Starship spacecraft to act as the Human Landing System.
Instead, Artemis II will fly on what’s planned for a 10-day mission flying a similar path to what was accomplished during the successful Artemis I mission that launched from KSC last November.
It will be the first time humans have flown to the moon since the end of the Apollo program in 1972.
The Orion capsule is already on site at KSC and should be ready by June. Summertime should also see the arrival of the massive core stage for the SLS rocket, which is nearly finished at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. The segments for the two solid rocket boosters are ready and waiting the call from KSC to make their way from Utah.
Stacking for all of the parts is not expected until January 2024 at KSC’s Vehicle Assembly Building.
