Florida, United States. The four astronauts selected for Nasa’s Artemis II mission were due to arrive in Florida on Friday, entering final preparations for the first crewed journey toward the Moon in more than five decades.
Mission timeline and flight plan
Nasa astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, are set to launch from Kennedy Space Centre as soon as April 1 aboard Nasa’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, riding inside an Orion crew capsule. The roughly 10-day mission is planned to send the crew on a high-speed loop around the Moon and back.
Contractors and hardware
Boeing is the prime contractor for the SLS core stage, Northrop Grumman builds the rocket’s solid-fuel boosters, and Lockheed Martin produces the Orion spacecraft.
Objectives of Artemis II
Artemis II will be the first crewed mission of Nasa’s multi-billion-dollar Artemis programme. The mission will not attempt a Moon landing, but is intended to send astronauts farther from Earth than any previous human spaceflight while testing Orion’s life-support systems, navigation, communications and heat shield performance.
Training and preflight quarantine
The crew has spent more than two years training since being named in 2023. They have been in standard preflight quarantine at Nasa’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston since March 18 and are scheduled to move into Nasa’s Astronaut Crew Quarters in Florida ahead of launch.
Milestones for the crew
Glover, the mission’s pilot, is set to become the first Black astronaut to travel into the Moon’s vicinity. Koch is set to become the first woman to do so, while Hansen is set to become the first non-American astronaut to go beyond low Earth orbit toward the Moon.
Statements and flight readiness
Wiseman, the mission commander, told reporters last year that the crew were prepared for multiple outcomes.
“When we get off the planet, we might come right back home, we might spend three or four days around Earth, we might go to the Moon – that’s where we want to go,” Wiseman said. “But it is a test mission, and we’re ready for every scenario.”
Crew experience
All of the crew members except Hansen have previously been in space. Wiseman, 50, logged 165 days aboard the International Space Station during a 2014 mission launched aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. A former US Navy test pilot, he later served as Nasa’s chief astronaut before being selected to command Artemis II.
Glover, 49, spent 168 days in space beginning in 2020 as pilot of Nasa’s Crew-1 mission, the first operational ISS mission using SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule. Before joining Nasa, he flew more than 40 aircraft during a US Navy career that included combat deployments and test-pilot duties.
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