NASA has unveiled the four-person crew selected to go on the first crewed voyage around the moon in more than half a century as early as next year. This includes the first woman and the first African-American astronauts ever assigned to a lunar mission.
Pilot Victor Glover, a veteran of the United States Navy. An engineer, and mission specialist Christina Koch, holds the record for the longest continuous spaceflight by a woman. They comprise the Artemis II crew.
Glover would make history as the first African-American astronaut to visit the moon as a member of the second crewed mission of a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft.
The four-person crew consists of Reid Wiseman, a veteran of the International Space Station, and Jeremy Hanson, the first Canadian ever chosen for a trip to the moon.
The four members of Artemis II were formally unveiled at a news conference streamed live from the Johnson Space Center, the mission control headquarters of NASA.
Artemis II will be the first crewed mission of a successor program to Apollo, although it will not be the first lunar landing. The ultimate objective of the program is to return people to the lunar surface by the end of this decade and construct a permanent colony there, opening the way for future human exploration of Mars.
