NASA will reveal the names of the four astronauts who will participate in the Artemis 2 mission in 2024

Selection criteria remain confidential but 41 currently active astronauts are eligible. NASA could choose to send the first woman and first person of color to the moon.

The identity of the American and Canadian astronauts who will make up the Artemis 2 mission crew will be revealed at 5 p.m. from NASA Center in Houston, Texas.

They will be the first humans to travel to the moon, without landing there, since the last Apollo mission in 1972. The 41 “active” astronauts are officially eligible to be part of Artemis 2. The selection process is kept top secret.

A woman in the crew?

A particular favorite is Gregory Reed Wiseman, a 47-year-old American. A former fighter pilot, he’s already spent six months aboard the International Space Station and previously served as director of NASA’s Astronaut Office.

But this new mission may also be an opportunity for NASA to send the first woman and first person of color to the Moon, when the Apollo program took 12 men there, all white.

“There’s Christina Koch, who’s an absolutely amazing woman, an engineer, who’s done a 328-day spaceflight, six spacewalks, so we’re on the level of Thomas Pesquet for the Americans,” Gilles Dawoodois, VP of the French Astronomical Society advances on BFMTV.

Moon landing in 2025

Artémis 2 is currently scheduled to launch in November 2024. The mission will take about ten days.

Unselected astronauts can rest easy hoping they will be selected to participate in Artemis 3, which will be the first moon landing mission scheduled for the end of 2025.