NASA reveals the names of the four astronauts who will orbit the moon in 2024

Thematic moon. On Monday, April 3, NASA introduced the four astronauts who will travel around the Earth’s satellite at the end of 2024. Americans Reed Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Hammock Koch, as well as Canadian Jeremy Hansen, will make up the Artemis 2 crew.

They will be the first humans to travel to the Moon, without landing there, since the last Apollo mission, in 1972. The mission commander, Reed Wiseman, as well as two of his compatriots have already flown in space. However, this will be a first for Jeremy Hansen. The White House said the four were congratulated in a phone call Sunday from President Joe Biden.

Towards a permanent presence on the moon

The Artemis Program intends to sign the eventual return of humans to the Moon with the establishment of a permanent lunar presence, by building a base on the Moon’s surface and a space station in orbit around it. Learning to live on the moon should make it possible to test all the technologies needed for a more complex journey: sending a crew to Mars.

Artémis 2 is currently scheduled to launch in November 2024. The mission will take about ten days. The four astronauts will travel on NASA’s SLS rocket, the most powerful rocket in the world today. It will sit at the top of that rocket, in the Orion capsule, which will separate once in space and take it around the Moon. When they return, they will land in the ocean.