The four crew members who will lead humanity's return to the Moon have finally embarked on their space journey aboard Artemis II. NASA successfully launched the Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion spacecraft at 7:35 a.m. Korean Standard Time on the 2nd.
As this marks the first crewed lunar flight in half a century since Apollo 17 in 1972, attention has focused on the four crew members. The team is led by Commander Reid Wiseman, joined by Pilot Victor Glover and Mission Specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen. They are recognized not only for their expertise but also as a "team of diversity" that breaks barriers of race and nationality.
Commander Wiseman is a former U.S. Navy test pilot who spent 165 days on the International Space Station (ISS) in 2014, leading more than 82 hours of scientific experiments. He also served as chief of NASA's Astronaut Office. With extensive experience in rigorous training and organizational leadership, he serves as the overall commander directing the crewed test flight.
Pilot Glover is a former Navy commander who completed SpaceX's first crewed mission, Crew-1, in 2020. With this flight, he has set the record as the first person of color to venture into deep space beyond low Earth orbit. NASA expects his operational experience to play a decisive role in fine-tuning the Orion spacecraft's maneuvering and verifying its deep-space navigation systems. The mission carries significant symbolic meaning as the first astronaut of color to head toward the Moon since the Apollo era.
Mission Specialist Koch holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a female astronaut at 328 days. An electrical engineering graduate, she also led the first all-female spacewalk in history. Koch becomes the first woman to enter lunar orbit on this mission, overseeing spacecraft system maintenance and scientific experiments. NASA expects the resilience she demonstrated during her long-duration space stay to prove equally valuable in the deep-space environment.
Hansen, of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), is a former Canadian Air Force colonel and the first non-American astronaut to embark on a deep-space mission. Although this is the only first spaceflight among the team members, he draws on years of experience training fellow astronauts to manage spacecraft operational efficiency. His inclusion is seen as a symbolic moment demonstrating that the Artemis program has established itself as an international collaborative exploration effort beyond a U.S.-only project.
Academics interpret this crew composition as a complete departure from the white male-dominated Apollo era. NASA has also ascribed the meaning of "pioneering new frontiers on behalf of all humanity" to the crew selection. In its official announcement, NASA described the four as "a crew of humanity representing the efforts of thousands," reaffirming the motto "E pluribus unum" — out of many, one.
The four crew members will perform a figure-eight orbital flight between Earth and the Moon over approximately 10.3 days. They are set to travel to a point 7,400 kilometers beyond the far side of the Moon, approximately 370,000 kilometers from Earth, setting a new record for the farthest distance humans have traveled in space. During the mission, they will collect data essential for lunar landing missions, including deep-space radiation conditions, communication delays, and the performance of the Orion spacecraft's life-support systems. The operational experience and verification results accumulated from this mission will become core assets for Artemis III, which targets an actual lunar landing in 2028. Humanity's return to the Moon after half a century is becoming reality.