The US space agency NASA has named four people who will fly around the moon on the “Artemis 2” mission next year: NASA astronaut Christina Koch, her colleagues Victor Glover and Reid Wiseman and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen. They would be the first people to be near the moon since the astronauts of the last “Apollo” mission set foot on our moon in 1972, as NASA announced on Monday.
The “Artemis 2” mission is currently scheduled for November 2024. It would be the first manned “Artemis” launch following the successful test of the “Artemis 1” mission in December. The unmanned capsule “Orion” had traveled around 1.4 million miles through space, flew around the moon and landed in space in the Pacific following around 26 days. She had collected important data.
The unmanned test mission was considered an important step for the return of humans to the moon, with the long-term goal of a trip to Mars. About a year following “Artemis 2”, another manned flight including moon landing is to follow with “Artemis 3”. The “Artemis” program, named following the Greek goddess of the moon, is intended to land a woman and a non-white person on the moon for the first time. The European Space Agency ESA and space agencies from several other countries are involved in “Artemis”.
