NASA announces the team for the 2024 moon flight

HOUSTON: NASA announces the names on Monday of the astronauts — three Americans and a Canadian — who will fly around the Moon next year (2024). A prelude to returning humans to the lunar surface for the first time in a half century.

The three Nasa astronauts — Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch named to the Artemis II mission have all spent time on the International Space Station while Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency will be making his first space flight.

Also Read: Soon WhatsApp to roll out new privacy feature

Koch, 44, an electrical engineer who took part in the first all-female spacewalks. While on the ISS, will the first woman to fly around the Moon. The four astronauts, dressed in blue flight suits, introduced by Nasa administrator Bill Nelson at an event at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston.

“The largest, most powerful rocket in the world is going to propel them onward and upward into the heavens,” Nelson said. “We choose to go back to the Moon and then on to Mars.” Wiseman, 47, a US Navy fighter pilot who previously served as Nasa´s chief astronaut. Named commander of the Artemis II mission. Which is scheduled to take place in November 2024 with the crew circling the Moon but not landing on it.

Also Read: Technology experts want banning tests on artificial intelligence

Glover, 46, also a naval aviator and the first African-American man to spend time as a crew member on the ISS, will be the pilot for the flight. Koch, the only woman on the Artemis II crew, and Hansen, a 47-year-old fighter pilot in the Canadian armed forces, will serve as mission specialists.

As part of the Artemis programme, Nasa aims to send astronauts to the Moon in 2025 — more than five decades after the historic Apollo missions ended in 1972.