The four crew members of NASA's Artemis 2 mission are in routine quarantine at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston since March 18, and are scheduled to move to astronaut lodging in Florida to prepare for the launch. Glover will become the first Black astronaut to travel to the Moon. The four selected astronauts for NASA's 'Artemis 2' mission are expected to arrive in Florida yesterday to begin final preparations for the first crewed mission to the Moon in over five decades. Mission commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, along with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, are set to launch from Kennedy Space Center no earlier than April 1 aboard NASA's massive Space Launch System (SLS) rocket inside the Orion capsule, designed to carry humans into deep space. The mission, lasting about 10 days, will send the crew on a flyaround of the Moon before returning to Earth. The 'Artemis 2' mission will be the first crewed mission under NASA's massive 'Artemis' program. Although the spacecraft will not land on the lunar surface, it will send astronauts farther from Earth than any previous human flight and test Orion's life support, navigation, communications, and heat shield systems, according to Reuters. The crew has spent over two years training for the mission since their selection in 2023. Koch will be the first woman to do so, while Hansen, who has never flown to space before, will be the first non-American astronaut to travel beyond low Earth orbit towards the Moon. Mission commander Wiseman explained to reporters last year that the crew is prepared for all possibilities, saying: 'When we leave the planet, we might come straight home, or we might spend 3 or 4 days around Earth, or we might go to the Moon. That's what we want to do, but it's a test mission, and we are ready for any scenario.' NASA plans to launch other missions under the 'Artemis' program in the coming years, working towards achieving a sustainable human presence on the Moon and future crewed missions to Mars.
