NASA’s most recent upcoming plans will finally come into fruition in November 2024. NASA plans to send 4 astronauts on the trip around the moon and then back to Earth. The 4 lucky astronauts are Christina Koch, Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman, and a Canadian astronaut by the name of Jeremy Hansen. Their most recent plan is to send this crew on a 10-day mission around the moon. This is a huge step in history as this trip will make Victor Glover be the first black Astronaut to fly into space.

Relating to that, Christina Koch will be the first woman on the moon, making this a mission of diversity as well. The crew will fly nearly 4,600 miles from the far side of the moon which will let them see the Moon and Earth from the space shuttle. While on the trip, the astronauts will also test various safety procedures while in the space shuttle.

Some may question why NASA even wants to go to the moon again, but the answer is quite simple. The goal of the NASA Artemis missions is to gain even more knowledge around the moon in order to see if they can sustain human life on the planet in the future. NASA stated, “With Artemis missions, NASA will land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon, using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before.” But NASA may have bigger plans than we thought. “Then, we will use what we learn on and around the Moon to take the next giant leap: sending the first astronauts to Mars,” said NASA.

This implies that there will be more Artemis missions that will hopefully end in the 4 person space crew landing on the moon and eventually other astronauts will end up on Mars. However, there have been delays in setting off Artemis missions due to its inspection. An expectation of a spacecraft can take nearly 4 days to complete. In this inspection, NASA decided that the heat shield may not work. This has further delayed the launch of the Artemis missions. However, NASA still expects to launch Artemis II in November 2024.