HOUSTON – As NASA prepares to select the crew for the second Artemis mission, the agency’s chief astronaut says the entire astronaut corps, and not a previously announced subset, is eligible for this flight and future ones missions to the moon.
In an Aug. 5 briefing at Johnson Space Center about the upcoming uncrewed Artemis 1 mission, Reid Weisman, the chief of the astronaut office, said he expected the four-person crew that will fly Artemis 2 was selected soon.
“The question everyone is going to be asking is when are we going to assign a crew to Artemis 2? We expect it to be later this year,” he said. This mission is expected to begin no earlier than 2024.
Artemis 2 will be Orion’s first manned flight, circling the Moon in about 10 days. The four-person crew will include a Canadian astronaut as part of a December 2020 agreement between NASA and the Canadian Space Agency on Canada’s contribution to the Canadarm3 robotic arm for the lunar gateway.
NASA has not indicated whether other international partners, such as Europe or Japan, will fly astronauts on Artemis 2. As for the agency’s own astronauts, Wiseman said the entire 42-person astronaut corps will be considered for to this mission and subsequent Artemis flights.
“The way I see it, any of our 42 active astronauts is eligible for an Artemis mission,” he said, a point he emphasized several times during the briefing. “We want to assemble the right team for this mission.”
That’s a change from late 2020, when NASA unveiled an “Artemis team” of 18 astronauts that agency leadership at the time, along with then-Vice President Mike Pence, said would form a group from which NASA would select at least the initial crews. Artemis missions.
“My fellow Americans, I give you the heroes of the future who will take us back to the moon and beyond, the Artemis generation,” Pence said at a December 2020 National Space Council meeting where he announce the 18 astronauts who would form the team. . Five of the 18 attended that meeting at the Kennedy Space Center.
Jim Bridenstine, NASA administrator at the time, said more astronauts would be added in the future, including those from international partners. “This is our first painting of our Artemis astronauts,” Bridenstine said. “I want to be clear: there will be more.”
Wiseman, however, emphasized that he would consider all current astronauts, as well as 10 astronaut candidates currently in training. “We have 42 active astronauts here in Houston and 10 astronaut candidates who will open the door to Artemis 2 and beyond,” he said.
He added that NASA has also changed lifetime radiation exposure requirements, which previously varied by age and gender, to a single limit. A June 2021 report from the National Academies endorsed this proposal, noting that it “creates equal opportunity for spaceflight” over previous standards that set lower limits for women.
Wiseman said those previous “draconian” standards had been replaced by a single cap. “We’ve equalized all the radiation limits. It doesn’t matter if you’re a man, if you’re a woman, it’s exactly the same.”
“Our ultimate goal is for the United States of America to be half men, half women. Well, space should be at least that,” he said. “If we can’t make these spacecraft equitable and we can’t fly any kind of person on them, then we have to look at our systems and reevaluate them.”
There are also no age restrictions on Artemis mission assignments, he said, noting that the astronaut corps includes people ranging in age from their late 20s to mid-60s. “As long as you’re healthy, we’ll load you into a rocket and blast you off the planet.”