NASA Reveals the 4 Astronauts Who'll Participate in Upcoming Moon Mission

This marks the first crewed moon mission in 50 years.

NASA just unveiled the four astronauts who will be making a trip to the moon!

The four astronauts will helm the first crewed moon mission in nearly five decades since the Apollo era.

During the event on Monday, April 3 in Houston, TX., astronauts Christina Koch, 44, Victor Glover, 46, and Reid Wiseman, 47, were announced to be joining Canadian astronaut, Jeremy Hansen, 47, on the Artemis II mission, which is scheduled to launch in Nov. 2024. 

Koch is a veteran of six spacewalks, including the first all-female spacewalk that occurred in 2019. She also holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman with 328 days in space. 

Glover is a naval aviator who piloted the second crewed flight of SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft. He returned to Earth in 2021 after nearly six months aboard the International Space Station. 

Wiseman is set to serve as commander of the Artemis II mission. He most recently served as chief of the astronaut office before he stepped down in Nov. 2022, which makes him eligible for flight assignments.

Hansen is a fighter pilot and one of only four active Canadian astronauts. He is set to be the first Canadian ever to travel into deep space. 

This exploration marks the first person of color and the first woman to ever walk on the moon. “We’re not truly answering humanity’s call to explore unless we represent all of humanity,” Koch said in an interview, per The Washington Post, adding, “And it’s awesome to be a part of this mission during a time when we recognize how important that is.”

The Artemis program is aiming to assemble a space station in lunar orbit that astronauts would visit on their way to the moon's surface. Unlike the Apollo mission in 1969 where they walked on the moon's equatorial region, NASA is now focused on the lunar South Pole, where there is water that froze over in the moon's permanently shadowed craters.