First Afro-American Astronaut To Be Sent on a Lunar Mission

NASA has named the first woman and the first African American assigned as astronauts to a lunar mission. Christina Koch and Victor Glover are part of the four-member team chosen for the Artemis II mission, which aims to conduct the first crewed voyage around the moon in more than 50 years.

The other two members of the crew are Jeremy Hansen, the first Canadian ever chosen for a flight to the moon, serving as a mission specialist, and Reid Wiseman, an International Space Station veteran, named as Artemis II mission commander.

The mission is part of an Apollo successor program aimed at returning astronauts to the moon's surface later this decade and ultimately establishing a sustainable outpost there as a stepping stone to future human exploration of Mars.