NASA and the Canadian Space Agency have announced the four astronauts who will travel around the moon on Artemis II, marking a historic milestone in space exploration. The mission is part of NASA's ambitious plan to put humans back on the moon, and potentially Mars.
The quartet includes Americans Christina Koch, Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman, and Canadian Jeremy Hansen. They were presented to the public in a ceremony in Houston, Texas. The mission will pave the way for a touchdown by a subsequent crew.
This will be the first set of missions that NASA has used to send a crew to the moon since Apollo 17 more than 50 years ago. The mission is scheduled to take off in November 2024 at earliest.
The Artemis expedition includes four missions costing roughly $4.1 billion each with an overall cost of up to $93 billion by 2025. It aims at providing scientific discovery, economic benefits and inspiration for new age space explorations while testing deep space exploration capabilities.
NASA had previously pledged to make its Artemis missions more representative including women and people of color among its team members.
This marks Canada’s involvement in this historic moment acknowledging their development of robotic arm technology key for assembling International Space Station (ISS) as well as ongoing development towards another arm for NASA’s planned Gateway lunar orbit outpost.
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