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  • Writer's pictureSTEM Today
    • 2 min read

NASA has flown 24 white American men to the moon. Now it's finally sending a woman, a Black astronaut, and a Canadian.

January 2024

Arisee Das Gupta


NASA is on its way to make another journey to the moon after 50 years and have revealed the crew mates that will be pursuing this mission.


The mission, Artemis II is finalised to send four astronauts to the moon for this 10-day mission, aboard NASA’s Orion Spaceship, sometime in November 2024.


The purpose of this mission is to lay the groundwork for a potential space base on the moon for future space travel on Mars.



As much as the purpose of this mission is exciting news, what is of particular positive news are the people who will be taking flight aboard this mission: Christina Koch, Victor Glover, and Reid Wiseman, as well as Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency.


Christian Koch, the first woman to fly to the moon is an engineer and participated in the first spacewalk in 2019; Victor Glover was the first Black astronaut to participate in a rotation on the International Space Station, and is now the pilot for Artemis II.


This is exciting news as this mission will include the first woman and the first black astronaut to ever fly to the moon—they will not land on the moon. However, the next mission Artemis III will drop two astronauts on the moon. NASA has made a promise that they will make sure that a woman and a person of colour will be made sure to land on the moon after the first ever landing in 1972 by the Apollo.



From past missions, all 24 of the astronauts who have orbited or landed on the moon have been white American men.


This mission is a first for a Canadian astronaut to be a part of the crew and signals NASA’s initiative for international collaboration.


NASA plans to collaborate with different nations to build its lunar base. So far, the US and 22 other countries have signed an agreement called the Artemis Accords that include guidelines for space exploration.


Furthermore, for the various Artemis missions NASA has built its most powerful rocket the Space Launch System, and the Orion spaceship, and the system was successfully tested through the first Artemis mission, Artemis I.


In addition, the agency is working with SpaceX to use its Starship satellites as a lunar lander for the Artemis III mission.


In the end, this mission is of many firsts as quoted by Glover: “We need to celebrate this moment in human history, because Artemis II is more than a mission to the moon and back. It’s more than a mission that has to happen before we send people to the surface of the moon. It is the next step on the journey that gets humanity to Mars.”





References

 

Business Insider. (n.d.). NASA to send first black astronaut, woman, and Canadian to the Moon. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-artemis-missions-first-black-astronaut-woman-canadian-to-moon-2023-4?amp 


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