Photo courtesy of NASA Johnson via Flickr. The Artemis II crew includes the first woman and the first Black person to go on a lunar mission.
By Sarah Grinnell ’26
Staff Writer
On April 3, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration made history in Houston, Texas, when it announced the four astronauts who will take part in its latest mission, Artemis II. Among the ranks will be the first woman and first Black astronaut to ever embark on a lunar expedition, TIME reported.
According to the BBC, the Artemis II mission marks NASA’s first moon-related journey in 50 years. As detailed by Time, the crew will fly around the far side of the Moon, the farthest any astronauts have ever traveled in space. The infamous Apollo 13 crew currently holds the record, with a distance of 401,056 km (249,205 mi.) traveled from Earth, Time reported.
According to Time, the mission, preceded by the uncrewed Artemis I, will be a 10-day journey. Artemis I embarked last year for a total of 25 days around the moon to test NASA’s all-new Moon rocket, the Space Launch System, and its crew capsule, the Orion, BBC described. After Artemis II completes its run in this spacecraft, Time says that it will ultimately be followed by a subsequent crew, Artemis III, that will land on the Moon.
The mission, which has been in the making since the last manned mission to the Moon in December 1972 with Apollo 17, has an approximate launch date in Nov. 2024, Time reported. It aims to recreate the 1968 mission of Apollo 8, the first manned expedition to the Moon, the BBC explained. According to NASA, the ultimate goal of the entire Artemis program is to explore and study the Moon anew, this time with more advanced technology, such as the SLS. Per NASA, the crew of Artemis III will eventually “search for the Moon’s water and use it,” study the Moon and test new tools which NASA will eventually use to send astronauts to Mars and revolutionize how humans can work and potentially live on the planet. As Victor Glover, one of the Artemis II crew, told the crowd at a ceremony in Houston, Artemis “is the next step on the journey that gets humanity to Mars,” the BBC reported.
The historic crew has already created waves even before takeoff. According to the BBC, the crew includes astronauts Christina Koch, Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman and Jeremy Hansen. The astronauts creating the most buzz, however, are Koch and Glover, the first female and Black astronauts to go on a lunar mission, respectively.
Koch — an electrical engineer — currently holds the record for most continuous days spent in space by a woman at a total of 328 days aboard the International Space Station (ISS), the BBC detailed. Alongside fellow NASA astronaut Jessica Meir, the BBC reported that she took part in the first all-female spacewalk in October 2019. According to Time, she has participated in half a dozen spacewalks so far in her career.
Per the BBC, Glover is a former U.S. Navy test pilot who joined NASA in 2013 and first took flight into space in 2020. He then spent 138 days aboard the ISS and participated in a total of 4 spacewalks. He was also the “first African American to stay on the space station for an extended period of six months,” the BBC reported, and he will now make history as the first Black person to travel to the Moon.
According to the BBC, Wiseman, also a U.S. Navy pilot, has crewed one previous space mission to the ISS, in 2015. He will be the commander of the mission, with Glover as his pilot. Koch will be a supporting “mission specialist” alongside Hansen, a former fighter pilot for the Royal Canadian Air Force who will make his first space journey with Artemis II, the BBC reported.
Hansen’s inclusion in the crew also marks a significant landmark, as the BBC points out that he will be the first Canadian on a lunar mission. This reflects what NASA administrator Bill Nelson calls in a Time article NASA’s commitment to “[explore] the cosmos with international partners.”
Given that all the previous missions to the Moon were crewed by white men, NASA’s decision to man Artemis II with a historically diverse crew mirrors what BBC described as its “promise to bring greater diversity to its exploration efforts.” As put by Nelson, Artemis “is humanity’s crew.” With the “Artemis Generation,” NASA hopes to “[usher] in a new era of exploration for a new generation of star sailors and dreamers,” BBC reported. With the first female, Black and Canadian astronauts to embark on the final frontier, these horizons have certainly been expanded.