NASA has named a team of four astronauts who will embark on a historic adventure around the moon before returning to the lunar surface.
Artemis II will see the crew aboard the Orion spacecraft carried by a Space Launch System (SLS) rocket — the most powerful rocket ever built — for a flyby of Earth’s only natural satellite.
The team is American astronauts Christina Koch, Victor Glover and Reed Wiseman, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
The 10-day mission marks the first crewed step in the Artemis program, which began with A drone voyage last November Test Orion and SLS for compliance.
It flew Orion 1.4 million miles past the Moon on a next-generation multibillion-dollar rocket.
Artemis II, slated for launch in 2024, will further improve the hardware—specifically, Orion’s life support system.
It sent humans farther into space than any program since the Apollo program, which was the last time humans landed on the moon.
Apollo 17 took place between December 7 and 19, 1973, making it the longest moon landing in history.
nasa The plan is to send the first woman and person of color to the Moon using Artemis III in 2025.
NASA hopes to use Artemis to establish a base camp and conduct annual missions — and use it as a test bed for more ambitious missions, including sending humans to Mars.