The first woman. The first person of color. The first Canadian.
The four people who will soon step aboard a spacecraft for the first human moon mission in more than half a century represent a tapestry of historic milestones. The crew of the NASA-led Artemis II mission is set to expand the roster of deep-space explorers beyond the narrow scope of the Apollo-era astronauts — a group exclusively composed of White American men, almost all with military backgrounds.
Yet while the astronauts will usher in an era of diversity for deep-space exploration, their credentials echo those of their Apollo counterparts.
The crew includes NASA’s Reid Wiseman, a Navy test pilot and single father who will serve as commander of the mission; Victor Glover, a naval test pilot who will become the first Black person to travel to deep space; Christina Koch, an engineer and record-holding astronaut who will become the first woman to venture to the moon; and the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen, a fighter pilot who will be the first non-NASA astronaut to join a lunar mission.
The high-stakes journey to the vicinity of the moon will take them beyond its far side — deeper into space than any human has ventured before — and it will pose myriad risks to the astronauts.
The 10-day, roughly 600,000-mile (965,600-kilometer) trip that’s set to launch as soon as April will expose the crew to dangerous levels of radiation. At various crucial points in the journey, the crew expects to lose contact with mission control because of the sheer distance and physics involved with the flight. Unexpected communications blackouts are also a real possibility.
And the astronauts will be the first humans to fly aboard the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System rocket — pieces of hardware NASA has spent two decades and more than $40 billion developing that still have known issues.
In interviews, the Artemis II crew members have expressed their hopes and optimism while also giving surprisingly candid nods to the realities of risk.
“It’s plausible that we can’t talk to Earth, and we’re having trouble with the spacecraft,” Hansen told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. about his mission training.
“What are the bare basics to give us a fighting chance to still be breathing and to hit somewhere on the planet and ideally hit the Pacific Ocean? Obviously, I’ve had that conversation with my wife and my children.”
Still, the four have also spoken openly about what this mission will mean for themselves and for NASA and its international partners, the CSA and the European Space Agency, which are racing to return humans to the lunar surface amid a new space race with China.
NASA has long billed the Artemis lunar exploration program as a stepping stone for exploring deeper into the cosmos.
Artemis II is a test flight that will circumnavigate the moon and will not land on its surface, but it will serve as a pathfinder mission for Artemis III, which is expected to touch down near the moon’s largely unexplored south pole.
