NASA announces astronauts who will fly to the moon in 2024

NASA on Monday announced the four astronauts who will join the crewed moon mission set to take off in November 2024, the first lunar flyby in five decades. 

The astronauts who will join the historic trip on board Artemis II will be Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency.

They're going to the Moon! Introducing the #Artemis II astronauts:

Reid Wiseman (@astro_reid), Commander
Victor Glover (@AstroVicGlover), Pilot
Christina Koch (@Astro_Christina), Mission specialist
Jeremy Hanson (@Astro_Jeremy), Mission specialisthttps://t.co/Hy1110MOEi pic.twitter.com/SeETL5iURu

— NASA's Johnson Space Center (@NASA_Johnson) April 3, 2023

Wiseman, 47, will be the commander of the mission. He is a naval aviator and test pilot from Baltimore, Maryland that was picked to be an astronaut by NASA in 2009. He completed a 165-day trip to the International Space Station in 2014 and served as chief of the astronaut office until November 2022. 

Glover, 46, joined the second crewed flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft and spent almost six months at the International Space Station. Prior to his space explorations, Glover served in military squadrons in the U.S. and Japan. He was selected for NASA’s astronaut corps in 2013. He is originally from Pomona, California.

Koch, 44, who has spent 328 days in space, holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman. She is an electrical engineer from Grand Rapids, Michigan, who has helped develop scientific instruments for NASA missions. 

The Artemis II mission comes after NASA successfully launched Artemis I for an uncrewed test mission on a 1.4 million-mile voyage around the moon. The manned mission to the moon is expected to take off in November 2024 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, if all goes as planned. 

While the mission does not involve the astronauts landing on the moon, NASA hopes their mission will pave the way for a later mission in which the crew will be able to step on it. 

The 10-day journey also plans to send the crew beyond the moon. However, the “exact distance beyond the Moon will depend on the day of liftoff and the relative distance of the Moon from the Earth at the time of the mission,” NASA spokesperson Kathryn Hambleton said via email.

“It’s so much more than the four names that have been announced,” Glover said during the Monday announcement at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston. “We need to celebrate this moment in human history... It is the next step in the journey that will get humanity to Mars.”