Artemis II

Four astronauts are about to become the most closely watched crew since Apollo. They will be the first in more than 50 years to orbit the moon, testing the path back for the next generation. The crew includes three Nasa astronauts - Commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch - along with Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency. Not only are they accomplished pilots, engineers and scientists, they are also spouses and parents balancing a heroic adventure against the risks they and their loved ones will face. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Wiseman lost his wife to cancer in 2020 and has raised their two teenage daughters alone. He describes being a single parent as his "greatest challenge and the most rewarding phase" of his life. He has not shielded his children from the realities of risk, however. While out on a walk with them, he said: "Here's where the will is, here's where the trust documents are, and if anything happens to me, here's what's going to happen to you… That's part of this life." He says he wishes more families had that conversation – because "you never know what the next day is going to bring". For the personal item Nasa allows astronauts to take up with them, Wiseman plans to take a small notepad so that he can jot down his thoughts during the mission. Christina Koch is an engineer and physicist who became an astronaut in 2013 and went on to set the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman, spending 328 days aboard the International Space Station in 2019. During that mission she also took part in the first all-female spacewalk. Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and raised in North Carolina, she will become the first woman to travel to the Moon. Her journey to Artemis II began with a photograph. As a child she kept a poster of the Earth rising above the lunar surface – Bill Anders' famous Earthrise picture from Apollo 8 – on her bedroom wall, and decided she wanted to become an astronaut when she learnt that a human, not an automatic camera, had squeezed the shutter. "The fact that it was a human behind that lens made that picture so much more profound and changed the way we thought of our own home," she says. "The Moon was not just a symbol for thinking about our place in the Universe, it is a beacon for science and understanding where we came from." Koch has spent more than 25 years around Apollo veterans through a scholarship foundation and Nasa remembrance events, and says that what the former astronauts have really taught her is camaraderie. Koch is taking handwritten notes from people close to her for her personal item, which she has described as a "tactile connection" to loved ones back on Earth. Jeremy Hansen is a former Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilot and physicist who joined the Canadian Space Agency in 2009. Although he has never flown in space before, he has played a key role in training new astronauts at Nasa's Johnson Space Centre, becoming the first Canadian to lead that work. He is married with three children and enjoys sailing, rock climbing and mountain biking. Like Koch, Hansen traces his fascination with space back to Apollo 8. Growing up in rural Canada, he turned his treehouse into an imaginary spaceship after seeing a photograph of Buzz Aldrin standing on the lunar surface. The risks the Apollo astronauts took has shaped how he talks to his own family about Artemis II. Over the Christmas holidays they watched footage of the uncrewed Artemis I launch together so he could warn them that, when the main engines light, it can briefly look and sound like the rocket is exploding – and reassure them that this is normal. He has told them, too, that when they hear engineers on the loop discussing "worst case scenarios" or unusual sensor readings, it will often sound scarier than it is; it is simply how teams probe the edges of safety on a first crewed flight. If all goes to plan, Hansen will become the first non-American to travel to the Moon – a m