NASA will take first woman, black and first Canadian to orbit the Moon

REid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Hammock Koch, from the US space agency, NASA, and Jeremy Hansen, from the Canadian space agency, CSA, will orbit the Moon aboard the Orion spacecraft.

The mission, lasting about 10 days in total, is the first manned mission for NASA’s new lunar program, Artemis. For the first time, a female astronaut, a black astronaut and a Canadian astronaut will be on board a space flight bound for the Moon.

NASA hopes, after this mission, to place astronauts on the surface of the Moon again in 2025, including the first woman and the first black man.

Only American astronauts have traveled to the Moon, namely 12 who stepped on its surface between 1969 and 1972 with the Apollo program.

In a statement, NASA said that the Artemis II mission will be commanded by astronaut Reid Wiseman and piloted by Victor Glover, who will become the first black person to go to the Moon.

Also part of the crew are the Canadian Jeremy Hansen, who will make his debut in space flights, and Christina Hammock Koch, who was at the service of the International Space Station as a flight engineer, participated in the first exclusively female spacewalks and is the woman who spent the longest time. tracked in space.

The Artemis II mission aims, according to NASA, to “test the life support systems” of the Orion spacecraft and “validate the capabilities and techniques necessary for humans to live and work in deep space”.

This mission will succeed Artemis I, which tested at the end of 2022, after several mishaps and delays, the launch of NASA’s new lunar rocket, the SLS, and the placement of the Orion spacecraft in the orbit of the Moon, its re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere and its landing in the Pacific Ocean.

The spacecraft, which has a European service module that provides all the basic needs of the crew, has the capacity to carry four astronauts and is partially reusable.

The SLS rocket, NASA’s most powerful, is not reusable, so new units have to be built for new missions.

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