The first brown man and the first woman. NASA announces names of those going to the moon in 2024

In a joint press release, NASA and Canada's CSA announced the names of the main crew that will launch around the moon in the second phase of the Artemis mission, which is expected to launch in 2024.

The list includes Red Wiseman, 47, and Victor Glover, 46, both U.S. Navy pilots, Christina Koch, 44, an electrical engineer who spent nearly a year in space, and Jeremy Hansen, 47, a Canadian Air Force fighter pilot.

It is noticeable that the mission has 3 precedents in the world of spaceflight, Christina Koch will be the first woman in history to travel to the moon, Victor Glover will be the first African-American man to have this opportunity, and Jeremy Hansen is the first Canadian to climb to the moon.

According to the agencies' statement, the crew's tasks include Weizmann as the flight commander, Victor Glover as the pilot's seat, and Koch and Hansen as the first and second "mission specialist" respectively, a job that usually involves an astronaut assigned to one specific mission in the space flight.

Artemis 1 space mission launches in August 2022 (Anadolu Agency)

From the moon to Mars

The return trip to the moon includes 3 main missions, the first "Artemis 1" launched in August 2022 and was crowned with success, in which the most powerful rocket in the world called the Space Launch System (SLS) was tested, and the capsule that will carry the four astronauts called "Orion", and this mission was unmanned.

The second mission, "Artemis 2", which will carry the four astronauts, will also be a test mission, where the focus of the flight will be to study the security of astronauts and return them to Earth safely, and Orion will travel to approach the moon at a distance of only 6,<> kilometers, then return to Earth and land astronauts in the Pacific Ocean.

If Artemis 2 is to succeed, Artemis 3 will launch to the moon in 2025, and this is where the journey will be for the purpose of landing on the moon.

NASA's plan to descend to the moon is the foundation of a more sustainable plan that includes the establishment of stations on its surface, to be used in the future as a base for the first humans to Mars.