Washington.– NASA selected yesterday the four astronauts who will go to the Moon at the end of next year.
The three men and one woman were introduced in a televised ceremony from Houston, where Mission Control is located.
“This is the crew of humanity,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
The three Americans and one Canadian will be the first to fly NASA’s Orion capsule when it blasts off from the Kennedy Space Center in late 2024. They won’t set foot on the Moon or even orbit it, but will fly around it and return to Earth, like preamble to a moon landing scheduled for a year later with two other astronauts.
Mission commander Reid Wiseman will be joined by Victor Glover, an African-American naval aviator; Christina Koch, who holds the world record for the longest-serving woman in space; and the Canadian Jeremy Hansen, the only one of the three without experience in space travel.
“This is a great day. We have a lot to celebrate, much more than the four names that have been announced,” Glover said.
This will be the first mission to the moon to include a woman and a non-US person. It will also be the first crew of NASA’s new lunar program, called Artemis.
Late last year, an empty Orion capsule was flown to the Moon and back, on rehearsal for the actual mission.
In the Apollo missions, NASA sent 24 astronauts to the Moon between 1968 and 1972. Twelve of them stepped on the lunar surface. All were military pilots with the exception of Harrison Schmitt, a geologist who participated in Apollo 17 and together with the late Gene Cernan closed that time.
If this 10-day mission goes well, NASA plans to land two astronauts on the lunar surface around the year 2025.
The space agency chose the Artemis crew from among 41 astronauts. Canada had four candidates.
