NASA Names First Female and First Black Astronaut for Next Moon Mission
Are you excited about NASA's more inclusive Moon mission?
Updated on April 4, 2023
- NASA has announced the first woman and first black astronaut for their Artemis II mission, the first time humans will revisit the moon in over fifty years.
- Christina Koch and Victor Glover will join Reid Wiseman and Jeremy Hansen in late 2024 or early 2025. Glover will be on board as the pilot and Koch will be acting as "mission specialist."
- They will not step foot on the moon but their mission will collect vital information and conduct reconnaissance.
- NASA has kept its promise of selecting a more diverse crew for the next moon mission.
- Bill Nelson from NASA said of the mission:
"The Artemis-2 crew represents thousands of people working tirelessly to bring us to the stars. This is their crew, this is our crew, this is humanity's crew. Nasa astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Hammock Koch, and CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen, each has their own story, but, together, they represent our creed: E pluribus unum - out of many, one. Together, we are ushering in a new era of exploration for a new generation of star sailors and dreamers - the Artemis Generation."
What's the story?
- NASA unveiled a new spacesuit better suited for female astronauts for its return trip to the Moon in 2025.
A new design
- The suits were designed by Texas-based company Axiom Space, who won the $228 million contract last year. The prototype is part of NASA's $1 billion investment to get two spacesuits designed in time for the mission.
- The existing spacesuits have not been completely redesigned since 1981, and the new prototype utilizes technological advances, such as 3-D printers and laser cutters, to ensure the suits are as dynamic as possible.
- The suit, called the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU), features joints stitched into it to provide the astronauts more flexibility and support while navigating the Moon's surface. The feature is vital as the Apollo Mission will survey geology and retrieve samples of the Moon's south polar region.
- The helmet also contains inbuilt lights and an HD video camera to send footage back to earth. The Axiom boots were designed to withstand the freezing temperatures in the permanently shadowed regions where the mission will focus its efforts.
- Mike Suffredini, Axiom Space president and CEO, said:
"Axiom Space's Artemis III spacesuit will be ready to meet the complex challenges of the lunar south pole and help grow our understanding of the moon in order to enable a long-term presence there."
"The Moon is a hostile place, and the south pole is really going to be a challenge. A lot of thermal requirements, we are looking for improved mobility so our astronauts can operate more efficiently."
Designed for female astronauts
- NASA aims to have the design ready for its Artemis III mission in 2025, which will be NASA's first return trip to the Moon. They have vowed to send the first woman and person of color to the Moon on this mission.
- Women's ability to go to space had previously been hindered by a lack of spacesuits in their size.
- In 2019, NASA planned to send an all-female team to complete a spacewalk, but days before their departure, NASA realized they didn't have any spacesuits in women's sizes. One of the astronauts, Anne McClain, had to be replaced by a male colleague, Nick Hague.
Are you excited about NASA's upcoming, more inclusive Moon mission?
—Emma Kansiz
(Photo Credit: Axiom via NASA)
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Sounds like the redesign space suits benefits everyone not just women as the space race between the US and China heats up. At stake is space mining and manufacturing not just for space exploration but providing energy on earth
The UN Outer Space Treaty blocks planetary ownership but not exploration and mining. There are dozens of startup and large companies working on the "space resources value chain".
In addition new mining and manufacturing techniques will be available in space than what can be done on earth like
1) optical mining," a technique using concentrated sunlight to excavate and extract propellant from volatile-rich asteroids, moons, and planetary surfaces
2) prototypes that collect sunlight and convert it to electrical energy, transfer energy wirelessly in free-space using radio frequency (RF) electrical power, and deploy ultralight structures that will be used to integrate them.
“NASA is pressing ahead with its mission to mine metals on the moon, seeking to bolster the sustainable space travel market and set the tone for a growing space race with China.”
https://www.spacesolar.caltech.edu/publications
https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/06/100m-donation-powers-decade-long-moonshot-to-create-solar-satellites-that-beam-power-to-earth/
https://interestingengineering.com/science/caltechs-space-based-solar-power-project-could-power-our-planet
https://greenstocknews.com/news/nyse/rdw/redwire-wins-nasa-contract-to-advance-new-in-space-manufacturing-capability-for-journeys-to-moon-mars-and-beyond
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/03/a-solar-power-station-in-space-here-s-how-it-would-work-and-the-benefits-it-could-bring
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2022/12/china-2023/
https://www.space.com/space-mining-grinding-into-reality
Why screw up another planet, you might fix the one you got first! You got Russia, China, North Korea, South America, South Africa, Middle East, Asia and others? And a hole lot of drug addict, mental illness and white nationalist Christianity.
I thought it was GREAT when we first went to moon.
But I seriously do not understand why we are going back...
I don't get it.
We have too many problems here at home that are threating to destroy the livability of our planet. But instead of working together to save our world, we are wasting our resources and our treasure on stupid wars and a new generation of moon liandings.
Humans aren't very wise...
meanwhile, our planet dies, the people need housing and healthcare. I am a huge fan of science, but this is a waste of money, and a distracton from the very real problems we face as a nation, and a planet.
Welcome to this century and space travel
How do they know its a woman? Or are their no democrats at nasa?
A moon base is necessary to develop the technologies needed to send a manned mission to Mars. The moon is seen as as staging area for the launch vehicles needed to reach Mars - places to store, produce and/or process fuels and find or construct habitable areas to shelter astronauts from the cosmic rays and the solar wind that they will be exposed to (they will be outside of the magnetic bubble that surrounds the earth and much better shields them in near earth orbital missions). Methods for needed Mars habitats are intended to be researched on the moon as well as means to produce them from lunar or martian natural resources.
All of the astronauts need to have adequately fitting and durable space suits, including our female astronaut corps. They are expected to be part of the early Mars missions so that new habitats will be cleaned up and adequate meals can be provided when the male astronauts first arrive.[ PLEASE, that last sentence was a joke only intended to get the endorsement of the lunar missions from the Federalist Society and the Republican Cartel - and yes, I do have a warped sense of humor.]
Since the moon is synchronously locked to the earth’s rotation and one side of the moon is always looking down at the earth’s surface, there are opportunities to better monitor global climate dynamics in ways that should help guide how to deploy the tools, techniques, methodologies and equipment needed at scale to deal with climate change which will take decades to redress.
There is also a great economic potential for a lunar base.
He3 is known to be present within the lunar surface in large amounts due to the lack of lunar atmosphere and lunar magnetic field which provides direct surface exposure to solar winds, which carry and/or form He3. There are few accessible natural sources of He3 on earth except trace amounts that can be created and collected as a minor byproduct of some nuclear reactions or found at very low concentrations in volcanic gases originating from deep within the earth’s crust
Setting up a lunar presence to extract He3 from the soil and refine it would allow extremely efficient nuclear fusion reactors to be built which have little to no nuclear radiation as a byproduct.
He3 is a helium atom with an missing neutron and is a stable non-radioactive isotope of helium. Fusion of H2 (Hydrogen with an extra neutron) and He3 results in non radioactive byproducts of H2 and Helium (He4) and the emission of charged protons, the power of which can effectively be used to generate large amounts of electric energy. Laboratory experiments have demonstrated the potential for much lower energy fusion requirements than for H2 fusion and there are no radioactive byproducts. There is enough He3 deposited in the lunar surface to power all the the world’s energy needs for thousands of years.
A small He3 reactor could easily power a Mars base as well.
Scientific discovery should not be canceled because there are other dire needs. We can do both. A lot of scientific research and discovery to date has been canceled due to other priorities - discoveries which may well have held the very keys needed to thwarting the climate crisis and geopolitical unrest that will be coming from competitions for increasingly scare resources.
Learning more about the universe is great, but we still need to solve the environmental problems on Earth and punish the living shit out of those responsible.
Why are we wasting money on outer space, when there's so much to fix here on Earth? This money should be used to help US eliminate hunger, homelessness, etc.
Let's go farther than the moon. A good step for diversity as the republicans tell about it.
I love science, and space travel has always fasinated me...however, I must ask why? why now? why spend billions on a space flight to the moon when we have so many things here on Earth that desperatly need addressing.
We need real action on the climate crisis, healthcare and housing for all, repairs to our crumbbling infulstructure, and investment in education.
I never want to hear '' who will pay for it?'' or ''where is the money gonna come from?'' in regaurds to social welfare ever again. they ''find'' the money for this, plus new wars all the time...
About time
To watch interviews with the four astronauts, it just looks to me like a normal assemblage of citizens of this country/continent. It is sad that in 2023 we are still talking about the 'first woman' or the 'first person of color' in many aspects of life. It is time for ALL entities to stop relying on the tired old ideas of old white men and broaden their perspective to recruit brilliance from wherever it is found.
For anyone who doesn't think it's worth the money, check out how much innovation occurred the last time we were in a "space race."
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/07/08/space-race-inventions-we-use-every-day-were-created-for-space-exploration/39580591/
I’ve always been a huge NASA fan. I can remember watching the first lunar landing. I followed the shuttle program, through the good and unfortunate. NASA just announced their crew of four which is slated to return to the Moon in next year’s Artemis mission, a crew that consists of a women, a black man and two white men. Unfortunately based on NASA’s recent actions, this diversity isn’t by happenstance, but is obviously forced diversity, meaning that merit and ability has been removed from the equation. NASA astronauts used to be the best and brightest and fit, now they are playing to the woke audience.
I believe it's high time for us as a species to go out and establish a permanent presence off World. This will enable us to collect resources to build wealth and spread HomoSapiens around the Solar System. I am less then keen to continue throwing money at ULA as they've proven to be wasteful and incompetent in the extreme. Redirecting those funds into Private Space Contractors would be much more valuable to us as a Country as well as to help our entire species survive the next 50 years...
Women make better Astronauts. Women do everything better!
Not excited, just glad. I look forward to the day when race and gender aren't headline news. (Yeah, I'm an idealist. So sue me....)
Commentators did a very good job explaining why this is such a good idea. So I will take a different approach.
Earthlings badly need positive and good vibes! We have all the woes and problems of the earth and we get enough of that in the news.
Politicians - for whatever their reasons may be - tries to resolve world problems. Ok - let them do them.
This voyage to the Moom is just positively great news. Many youngsters will have dreams of voyages to planets other than the moon when they watch the success of the launching, landing on the moon, and back to Earth.
That is good for humanity. Successful voyages create positive and good news.
Let's get excited!!!!
First thing - WHAT DOES race have to do with anything??????
The moon - what for???? We need borders and illegals GONE - how about that for useful. NASA has been useless for years
I'm "over the moon" that this is happening!
yes
About time!
I only hope that this individual, regardless of race or colr was chosen because of their ability!
A launching point to get us to Mars? No point really when Mars is already here. Besides, if they're not sending a gender-confused astronut, Gumby & Pokey or Hunter Biden, what's the point?
I'm happy to see the crew of the next mission reflects the diversity of the United States. I hope this mission will be a great success with those new uniforms.
As a woman this is great news! I'm also happy to see a bruther in the mix too.
Working in the white man's world is tough. So happy to see this. Best wishes and safe travels!