Get you up to speed: NASA prepares Artemis II astronauts for first crewed moon mission in 53 years
The Artemis II crew, consisting of Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen, is set to launch on a 10-day mission around the moon. This mission marks the first crewed journey to the moon since 1972 and will use NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft.
The Artemis II mission, scheduled to launch at 6:24 PM on April 1, 2026, marks the first crewed journey to the Moon since 1972, aiming to advance US space exploration efforts, according to NASA. Commander Reid Wiseman noted he plans to use a notebook to document his thoughts during the mission, which will see astronauts travel 230,000 miles into space.
The Artemis II crew, comprising Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen, are set to launch on their 10-day trip around the moon from Kennedy Space Center, scheduled for April 1, 2026, at 6:24 pm (2224 GMT). This mission marks the first time astronauts will travel beyond Low Earth Orbit in 53 years.
Artemis II astronauts say goodbye to their families before moon launch | News World
The crew are suited and booted for their big mission to the dark side of moon (Picture: Getty)
The Artemis II astronauts have waved goodbye to their families and friends as they prepare to launch on their voyage around the moon.
Jeremy Hansen, Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman and Christina Koch are about to embark on their 10-day trip to the moon and back for the first time in 53 years.
Glover was seen mouthing ‘I love you’ to each of his family members in matching t-shirts and giving a thumbs up before the voyagers boarded a shuttle bus on their way to the launch pad 39B.
The launch now looks likely to go ahead with the crew all in their flight suits and good weather conditions.
Waving to family, colleagues and news photographers, the crew boarded the so-called astrovan for the 9-mile ride to the launch pad and their awaiting SLS rocket.
The crew are set to embark on the first journey to the Moon since 1972, a landmark odyssey
(Picture: AFP or licensors)
Before their highly anticipated walkout, commander Reid Wiseman and his crew played a quick card game with NASA’s chief astronaut Scott Tingle. It’s a preflight tradition since the space shuttle era.
Pilot Victor Glover goes for a typical dad thumbs up for a photo with his family (Picture: Getty)
Commander Reid Wiseman makes a love heart with his family (Picture: Getty Images)
Losing is good: It means the astronaut has gotten rid of all bad luck before launching.
The four thanked the suit techs and posed for photos, keeping a safe distance from many of the bystanders to avoid germs.
They then went down the elevator at the Neil Armstrong Operations & Checkout Building and walk out to a barrage of cameras and cheers.
Who are the four Artemis II astronauts?
Reid Wiseman
Artemis II mission’s Commander Reid Wiseman (Picture: Reuters)
A decorated veteran Navy aviator, Reid Wiseman will be commander of the crew. The Baltimore is a single dad of two, having lost his wife, Carroll Taylor Wiseman, to cancer in 2020.
Wiseman, 50, was selected as a Nasa astronaut in 2009. This won’t be his first time in space – he served as a flight engineer on the floating research base, the International Space Station, in 2014.
According to his Nasa biography, he completed two spacewalks and helped set a station record by completing 82 hours of research in a week.
He thinks about the moon – a lot – and is taking a notebook with him to jot down his thoughts.
He told Space.com last year: ‘When I stand on the surface of Earth now, and I look at the moon at night – and I might see a waxing gibbous, but I know now on the far side that’s a waning crescent – I’m flipping my brain around to all of those things, and just understanding that.
‘Like, I’ve never spent time in my entire life thinking about that. But now it’s all I think about.’
Victor Glover
He said he hopes there will be a day when ‘firsts’ aren’t such a big deal (Picture: Reuters)
The Pomona, California, local will be the pilot of the Orion capsule and will become the first Black man to travel around the moon.
The dad-of-four has several master’s degrees and plans to take a Bible and some family heirlooms up to the stars with him.
The 49-year-old Navy captain and former combat pilot from Pomona, California, makes it a habit to listen to Gil Scott-Heron’s ‘Whitey on the Moon’ and Marvin Gaye’s ‘Make Me Wanna Holler’ from the white-dominated Apollo era.
‘I listen to those for perspective,’ he said. ‘It captures what we did well, what we did poorly.’
The ability for him now to offer hope to others is ‘an amazing blessing and a privilege.’
But he said over the weekend that as much as he hopes his lunar trip will inspire young Black children to become astronauts, he hopes ‘one day we don’t have to talk about these firsts’.
Christina Koch
Christina Koch in the middle of the Artemis II crew (Picture: Getty)
Meet Artemis II’s mission specialist, Christina Koch, who will be the first woman to head to the moon.
Koch, from Jacksonville, North Carolina, was selected to be a spacefarer alongside Glover, having wanting to be an astronaut since she was 12.
In 2019, she set history by taking part in the first all-woman spacewalk at the ISS.
Yes, Koch, 47, has also been to space before. She essentially spent almost an entire year in the cosmos, at 328 days, and carried out 42 hours and 15 minutes’ worth of space walks.
Nasa knew Koch well before becoming an astronaut as she worked as an electrical engineer at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
‘For me, all these firsts are really not about one individual’s accomplishments but celebrating where we are at,’ she told The New York Times in January.
Jeremy Hansen
The Canadian Space Agency astronaut is one of the tallest in the field (Picture: AFP)
Like most of us, Jeremy Hansen often feels small when looking up at the moon.
But in the world of astronauts, he might as well be as big as the moon. He’s a gigantic 6’2″, nearly hitting the upper limit of how tall astronauts can be.
Hansen, 50, will be the first Canadian in space, hailing from a farm on the outskirts of London, Ontario.
He’s Artemis II’s other mission specialist and kicked off his future career in the stars by joining the Royal Canadian Air Cadets at age 12.
The CSA, Canada’s space agency, picked Hansen to be an astronaut in 2009. He’s going to bring four moon pendants he gave to his wife and children to the moon and back.
‘We’re going to have extraordinary things that we will see,’ Hansen told Space.com. ‘[Seeing] Earth from the moon: It’s something amazing.’
What is Artemis?
Artemis, Nasa’s return-to-the-moon programme, has been plagued by delays, technical hiccups and budget cuts for years.
This has all but denied generations of astronauts their chance at walking where Neil Armstrong once did in 1969.
The last time humans were casually strolling – or moonwalking, we suppose – on the moon was for the 1972 Apollo 17 mission.
Donald Trump made bringing American space boots back to the lunar surface a goal during his first administration, signing Artemis in 2017.
Space officials were tasked with working with commercial companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX to build a lunar-orbiting Gateway outpost.
The project’s first mission, known as Artemis I, involved an uncrewed Orion capsule doing a 1.3 million-mile lap around the moon in 2022.
One small step for man… again (Picture: WTX)
Unlike the Apollo missions, the second Artemis mission won’t actually land on the moon.
Nevertheless, it will be the first to leave Low Earth Orbit (LEO) in 53 years.
It will also be the first time that astronauts launch on top of NASA’s giant Space Launch System rocket and then swing around the Moon inside the Orion crew capsule.
This equipment was one of the main reasons Artemis II was postponed by more than a year, with NASA citing issues with Orion’s life support system.
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