The four astronauts making NASA’s next lunar leap will fly on a mission designed to pave the way for future moon landings, with no landings this time. The crew departs from an Apollo-era template in some key ways, coming from a more diversified astronaut corps than the white men chosen in the early 1960s and 1970s for military test-pilot experience.
Artemis is not a repeat of Apollo’s orbiting and walking sequence, and the mission will not land on the moon or even orbit it. Instead, the out-and-back journey is expected to carry the astronauts thousands of miles deeper into space than Apollo astronauts ventured, setting up what NASA says will be deeper experience aimed at future lunar operations.
Commander Reid Wiseman, 50, will lead the nearly 10-day mission, which he framed in large part around family responsibilities rather than the spacecraft. Wiseman, a retired Navy captain from Baltimore who previously served as NASA’s chief astronaut, said his wife Carroll’s death from cancer in 2020 gave him pause, and that solo parenting—rather than the trip itself—has become his biggest and most rewarding challenge.
Wiseman described how his daughters responded when he was asked three years ago to lead humanity’s first lunar trip since 1972. “We talked about it and I said, ‘Look, of all the people on planet Earth right now, there are four people that are in a position to go fly around the moon,” he said. “I cannot say no to that opportunity.” He added that the toughest part is not leaving them, but “it’s the stress that I’m putting on them,” and he has opened with his daughters about everything, telling them where he keeps his will.
Pilot Victor Glover, 49, said his presence on the mission has broader meaning beyond his personal experience. As one of NASA’s few Black astronauts, he said he sees his role as “a force for good,” and he described listening to Gil Scott-Heron’s “Whitey on the Moon” and Marvin Gaye’s “Make Me Wanna Holler” from the Apollo era as a way to sharpen perspective. “I listen to those for perspective,” he said. “It captures what we did well, what we did poorly.”
Glover, a former combat pilot from Pomona, California, also said he has his own kind of preparation to do while looking to future missions. While he has one spaceflight experience—an early SpaceX crew run to the International Space Station—he said the Artemis mission puts him in new personal territory as he prepares for it alongside his four daughters, who are in their late teens and early 20s. He described trying to focus on the next steps in the program, including a 2027 practice docking mission in orbit between an Orion crew capsule and one or two lunar landers, with a moon landing following in 2028 with yet another crew.
Mission specialist Christina Koch, 47, said nerves are not a central issue for her because she has already spent a long time in space. The electrical engineer from Jacksonville, North Carolina, holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman at 328 days, and she took part in the first all-female spacewalk during her lengthy stay at the space station in 2019.
Koch said what matters most to her is not just the duration of the Artemis trip, but what it represents for other women. More than any one individual moment, she said, “it’s about celebrating the fact that we’ve arrived to this place in history” where women can fly to the moon. Before she was called up by NASA, Koch spent a year at a South Pole research station, and she said that experience—along with her time in space—has left her feeling “inoculated” most of her family and friends.
She said her household is trying to adjust to the shorter timeline by comparison to her last mission, telling people it will be 10 days. “So far, I haven’t gotten too many nerves from folks. Maybe my dog, but I’ve reassured her that it’s only 10 days. It’s not going to be as long as last time.” Koch and her husband’s rescue pooch is named Sadie Lou.
Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, 50, will make his space debut on the mission, and he said the stress of that first flight has come alongside a new kind of responsibility for his country. Hansen, a fighter pilot and physicist, said his role also includes serving as Canada’s first emissary to the moon, and he said: “Maybe I’m naive, but I don’t feel a lot of personal pressure.”
Hansen grew up on a farm near London, Ontario, before moving to Ingersoll and pursuing a flying career. The Canadian Space Agency selected him as an astronaut in 2009, and he was named to the Artemis crew in 2023. He said he realizes only now how much effort it took to send men to the moon during Apollo.
“When I walk out and I look at the moon now, it looks and feels a little bit farther than it used to be,” he said. “I just understand in the details how much harder it is than I thought it was watching videos of it.” He said that even with that understanding, dangers still loom, and he has shared those realities with his college-aged son and twin daughters, telling them: “The most likely outcome is that we will come back safe. There’s a chance we won’t, and you will be able to move through life even if that happens,” he said.