(CNN) — NASA announced Monday that four astronauts — three Americans and one Canadian — will orbit the moon next year on the Artemis II mission, which will return humans to the deepest part of the solar system in five decades.
Mission commander Reid Wiseman is a 47-year-old decorated Navy aviator and test pilot who was first selected as a NASA astronaut in 2009. Weissman remains head of the Astronaut Office until November 2022. You can’t fly though. While on the job, you can get great flight assignments when you’re off the job, which is a “recognized perk” of the job, says former NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman.
Pilot Victor Glover, a 46-year-old Navy aviator who returned to Earth from his first space mission in 2021, then piloted the second crew flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft and spent nearly six months aboard the International Space Station. A veteran of four space missions, he earned a master’s degree in engineering while moonlighting as a test pilot.
Mission experts Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen.
Koch, 44, has completed six space missions. With a total of 328 days in space, she holds the record for the longest space flight by a woman. Koch is an electrical engineer and has helped develop scientific instruments for many NASA missions. She spent a year at the South Pole, a harsh shelter that would prepare her well for the rigors of a trip to the moon.
Hansen, 47, was selected as an astronaut for the Canadian Space Agency 14 years ago, his first space flight. The 47-year-old fighter pilot recently became the first Canadian to train a new class of NASA astronauts.
“A trip to the moon will send four pioneers, but it will carry more people than astronauts,” NASA President Bill Nelson said in a statement. “Artemis II will carry the hopes of millions of people around the world. It will carry the aspirations of the NASA family who gaze at the moon every night, whose efforts will return us to the moon. Students burning tabs in libraries and laboratories prepare for a day to support the Artemis mission.”
The release of this work is planned for November 2024.
