NASA sends the first black and first female astronauts to the moon
NASA is preparing to launch a mission to the moon – and it’s making history for several reasons.
The space agency’s Artemis II launch marks the U.S.’s first trip back to the moon in more than 50 years. It will also carry the first black astronaut and the first female astronaut to travel to the moon, although the mission will be a flyby without landing on the surface.
The launch, originally scheduled for early February and now postponed, will carry four astronauts around the moon and back, including Victor Glover and Christina Koch, the first black and first female astronauts, respectively, to make the flight.
The mission follows the success of the Artemis I launch in 2022, which was scaled down, and marks NASA’s next step toward eventually sending astronauts to Mars.
“The benefits of the Artemis program are technological, but also cultural,” Glover, who is a decorated U.S. Navy captain and has traveled to the International Space Station, said in a 2024 NASA video. “What really means something to me is the inspiration that will come from this, inspiring future generations to reach for the moon, literally reach for the moon.”
Koch began her career at NASA, where she worked as an engineer and then conducted scientific research before becoming an astronaut in 2013 and also traveling to the International Space Station.
“The one thing I’m most excited about is that we will take your enthusiasm, your ambitions and your dreams with us on this mission,” Koch said at the 2023 press conference when the mission’s astronauts were announced.
Danielle Wood, a professor in the astronautics department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said this mission builds on decades of work by NASA, including lessons learned from its previous failed ventures.
“NASA has been thinking throughout this entire process for two decades about what are we going to do to prepare the government to focus on these more difficult next-generation missions and be able to do things that haven’t been demonstrated yet,” Wood told CNBC.
Wood said she is also grateful that NASA is committed to sending more diverse astronauts into space who “represent society in a broader sense.” Although the space agency initially focused on military training for astronauts, it said opening up those requirements has led to exciting developments.
“It’s still the case that there’s a lot of innovation, a lot of glass ceilings that need to be broken by black women and black men and women in general – that’s still real,” Wood added.
The mission will also involve more than just an exploration trip to the moon, she said. NASA will conduct scientific research on astronaut health, the rocket and lunar science. The mission also works with other countries such as Saudi Arabia and Germany through “goodwill” agreements to pool resources for lunar research, Wood said.
“This is just one step toward this larger, new form of surgery,” she said.
Space historian Amy Shira Teitel, who has explored space for more than two decades, said Artemis II marks the beginning of NASA’s next research chapter.
“It marks a new era of leaving low Earth orbit, which we haven’t done since 1972,” she told CNBC. “It is still a significant step because ultimately we will still gain some information that we can apply to the next step.”
Still, Teitel has her doubts about whether this launch will be the first step toward a permanent presence on the moon. Because of budget constraints, multiple launch delays and complicating political factors, the rocket that launched this mission is “widely viewed as a giant nonsense,” Teitel said.
This is despite the fact that the space sector – and the journey back to the moon – has become increasingly crowded.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX announced earlier this month that it was shifting its efforts from Mars exploration to lunar exploration. Rocket and spacecraft builder based in Texas Firefly Aerospace and a Houston-based space startup Intuitive machines sent both spacecraft to the moon.
And NASA plans to decommission the International Space Station in favor of smaller space stations focused on the Moon and Mars, which will add additional costs. The U.S. Senate also passed legislation to support NASA’s progress and create thousands of jobs in the aerospace industry, particularly in Alabama, where the Marshall Space Flight Center is located.
Although the launch of Artemis II will mark a significant step in NASA’s history, Teitel said she wants to remain cautiously optimistic about the future of space exploration despite the hurdles.
“There are so many challenges with this program right now that come from politics, not from the astronauts or the engineers, but just the fact that space is so complicated and so entrenched in politics and so expensive that it’s hard to be so excited about this next step when everything else seems so tenuous,” Teitel said.
