NASA Will Soon Reveal Who's Flying to the Moon for the Artemis 2 Mission

We are soon going to larn the identities of the 4 astronauts who volition strap into the Orion spacecraft and question farther into abstraction than immoderate unit before.

NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) volition denote the astronauts for the upcoming Artemis 2 ngo connected April 3, according to a connection released connected Friday. The highly anticipated announcement volition instrumentality spot astatine NASA’s Johnson Space Center’s Ellington Field successful Houston astatine 11 a.m. ET and volition aerial unrecorded connected the abstraction agency’s website and NASA Television.

“Traveling aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft during Artemis II, the ngo is the archetypal crewed formation trial connected the agency’s way to establishing a semipermanent technological and quality beingness connected the lunar surface,” NASA wrote successful its statement.

Artemis 2 is simply a important portion of the Artemis lunar program, presently slated for motorboat sometime successful 2024. The ngo volition motorboat a unit of 4 astronauts connected committee the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which volition loft the Orion capsule to Earth orbit. With the Artemis 2 unit tucked wrong Orion, the spacecraft volition alert by the Moon earlier returning backmost to Earth.

The Orion capsule has already gone to the Moon and backmost arsenic portion of the Artemis 1 mission, an archetypal trial formation to guarantee the palmy integration of the spacecraft with the SLS rocket. But Artemis 1 didn’t person a unit connected board, truthful its successor volition people the archetypal clip that a unit has traveled to the Moon since the days of the Apollo ngo implicit 50 years ago.

Although Artemis 2 volition not onshore astronauts connected the lunar surface, it volition pave the mode for Artemis 3 which is designed to interaction down connected the Moon nary earlier than 2025.

In anticipation of the Artemis 2 launch, determination has been speculation implicit who volition beryllium selected arsenic portion of the four-person crew. In August 2022, Reid Wiseman, main astronaut astatine NASA, said that each of NASA’s 42 progressive astronauts were eligible for the lunar trip. The abstraction bureau had antecedently announced a select radical of 18 astronauts for its Artemis programme successful December 2020 that included Christina Koch and Jessica Meir, who took portion successful the first all-female spacewalks, arsenic good arsenic Jessica Watkins, the archetypal Black pistillate to embark connected a semipermanent ngo successful abstraction and the archetypal to live and enactment connected the ISS. 

Canada has been a subordinate of the Artemis programme from the precise beginning. In December 2020, NASA and CSA announced an statement to alert a Canadian astronaut connected committee Artemis 2. Canada volition besides supply the Canadarm 3, a robotic limb that volition beryllium attached to the Lunar Gateway as portion of the Artemis program. Another Canadian astronaut volition alert to the gateway sometime successful the future.

Overall, the enactment process for the Artemis astronauts is kept tightly nether wraps truthful it volition beryllium hard to archer who’s gearing up for that lunar formation until the April announcement.

More: NASA Is Set to Reveal the Artemis Moon Suits, and We’re Hyped