NASA announces astronauts who will fly by the moon next year

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NASA on Monday announced a team of four astronauts who will launch on a critical test flight next year to slingshot around the moon, setting the stage for the agency’s long-awaited return to the lunar surface.

In an event held in Houston, the agency named NASA astronauts Christina Hammock Koch, Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen as the crew for its upcoming Artemis II flight, slated to launch in 2024.

“The Artemis II crew represents thousands of people working tirelessly to bring us to the stars,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said at the ceremony. “This is their crew. This is our crew This is humanity’s crew.”

Wiseman will act as the commander of the Artemis II flight. A former naval aviator test pilot, he was selected to become a NASA astronaut in 2009. In 2014, he launched to the International Space Station on a 165-day mission as part of the Expedition 41 crew.

NASA said Glover, a former captain in the U.S. Navy, will be the mission’s pilot. He was selected as an astronaut in 2013 and previously flew on the second crewed flight of SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft to the space station.

Koch and Hansen will serve as mission specialists on the Artemis II flight. Koch, who became an astronaut in 2013, set a record in 2020 for the longest single spaceflight by a woman, after spending a total of 328 days in space aboard the space station. During that mission, she also participated in the first all-female spacewalk.​