NASA has named four astronauts as the first people who will fly around the moon in over 50 years, leading a pivotal spaceflight before humans return to the lunar surface.
U.S. astronauts Christina Hammock Koch, Victor Glover, and G. Reid Wiseman will ride in the Orion spacecraft for the Artemis II mission, expected to launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, as early as November 2024. Joining them will be astronaut Jeremy Hansen from the Canadian Space Agency.
The 32-story mega moon rocket — the most powerful in the world — will shoot them into the sky with 8.8 million pounds of thrust, a force equal to that of 160,000 Corvette engines. Not since the final Apollo flight in 1972 have astronauts made this journey.
Though women have trained and tested alongside men since the early 1960s(opens in a new tab), this mission marks the first time in history any woman will have traveled into deep space, hundreds of thousands of miles beyond the low-Earth orbiting International Space Station. For years, NASA simply said female applicants did not meet the stringent requirements for crew assignments. Now in 2023, the agency freely admits this day has been a long time coming.
"You have already been in the history books as a record-setting astronaut. You're a trailblazer and a role model for every generation to come," said Joe Acaba, NASA's chief of astronauts, of Koch, who will be the first woman to travel into deep space. "And as the only professional engineer in the crew, I know who mission control will be calling on when it's time to fix something on board."
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Artemis II will break another barrier by including the first person of color on a space mission beyond low-Earth orbit, pilot Victor Glover. NASA officials say the diverse crew assignments signify the immense cultural shifts that have taken place within the agency since the dawn of the program decades ago, when white men dominated human space exploration and aeronautics.
"All four astronauts will represent the best of humanity as they explore for the benefit of all," said Vanessa Wyche, director of NASA Johnson Space Center, in a statement.
Artemis II purpose
The mission is expected to serve as a crucial stress test(opens in a new tab) of Orion's life-support systems, the new passenger spacecraft NASA hopes will shuttle astronauts to the moon to carry out its long-term ambitions: establishing a permanent lunar base for research. The agency intends to use the moon as a testbed for a future mission to Mars, over 130 million miles in the distance. The crew selections were announced Monday morning from NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston.
"The commitment to go to the moon should be seen in the context of going to Mars," Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's former associate administrator for science, told Mashable last year. "That is perhaps one of the hardest things we'll have ever done as humans, in terms of technology, in terms of objectives. It's harder than going to the moon, it's harder than the Apollo program. And the way we're doing it is very different. We're doing it as a world, not as a country."
"The way we're doing it is very different. We're doing it as a world, not as a country."
That vision, a future in which people can travel to and survive on Mars, means NASA needs practice and can't do it single-handedly. By the time the agency is ready to send the first astronauts to walk on the moon as early as 2025, for example, it will have spent about $93 billion on the project, according to a federal watchdog. To become multiplanetary requires a host of other spacefaring nations and commercial partners to bear the costs.
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NASA has been getting buy-in on its plans from other nations through the Artemis Accords(opens in a new tab), an international agreement establishing standards for safe and collaborative space exploration. Agency officials say this mission, which includes a Canadian astronaut, demonstrates their commitment to international partnerships through the Artemis program.
"It is not lost on any of us that the United States can choose to go back to the moon by themselves," Hansen said. "But America has made a very deliberate choice over decades to curate a global team, and that, in my definition, is true leadership."
Artemis 2 mission
Over 10 days, the Artemis II astronauts will make two oval-shaped loops around Earth before flying around the moon. A Houston team will control most of the flight, but for the second Earth orbit, the astronauts will take charge of piloting a maneuver(opens in a new tab). That step will test Orion's capabilities for docking and undocking — necessary during the next Artemis III mission.
For the duration of the flight, NASA will observe how the spacecraft handles the air supply, removing carbon dioxide and water vapor as the astronauts breathe, especially during periods when they exercise.
Orion will make a single lunar flyby(opens in a new tab) during the mission, putting the astronauts on a path that will use Earth's gravity to reel them back home.
This second mission follows the completion of the inaugural Artemis spaceflight last December. NASA launched the empty Orion spacecraft with its mega moon rocket on Nov. 16, 2022. It flew a 1.4 million-mile journey, testing various orbits that had never been previously attempted.
After 25.5 days, the spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean and was recovered. Three months later, after reviewing flight data, the U.S. space agency called the mission a success.
But since its return, NASA's post-flight analysis has found the rocket's platform and spacecraft suffered excess damage during the launch and reentry into Earth's atmosphere, respectively. Teams are particularly concerned about the overly charred heat shield that protects Orion as it zooms 24,500 mph in 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit on its way back. The team has not determined yet whether the material needs to be redesigned.
"With Artemis I, we set out to prove that the hardware was ready," Acaba said. "Artemis II will leverage that by putting humans in the loop, executing operations in the critical path, leading to new footprints on the lunar surface."
