Why the Artemis II crew matters historically for moon mission

• The Artemis II mission will send a four-person crew on a 10-day journey around the moon.
• The crew includes the first woman, the first Black person, and the first Canadian to travel toward the moon.
• Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor J. Glover, and Specialist Christina Koch are from NASA.

Millions of eyes will be trained above the Space Coast and beyond, watching closely as the Artemis II crew makes its historic, high-powered trek toward the moon. 

In many ways the crew, who are set to liftoff as early as 6:24 p.m. Wednesday, April 1, is more a reflection of modern international relationships and an America at 250 years old than the stoic-minded astronauts who vaulted to the moon and back in the 1960s and 1970s.

The Artemis II crew includes the first Black man, the first woman and the first Canadian to ever fly on a moon mission.

“It has been a tremendous amount of work, but the cool thing for this crew is just how much effort we have been willing to put into it,” said mission commander Reid Wiseman on the recent NASA podcast, Houston We Have a Podcast, recorded in October 2025.

A diverse crew of distinction aboard Artemis II

The journey will mark the first time a Black person and a woman will have traveled beyond the low Earth orbit, heading into deep space toward the moon.

Mission pilot Victor J. Glover, a 49-year-old African American Navy captain, has a long space flight history both aboard the International Space Station and as pilot of the Crew-1 Dragon spacecraft. He is married with four children. 

Christina Koch, 47, is the crew specialist and a North Carolina electrical engineer who also journeyed to the space station for 328 days during a previous mission after becoming an astronaut in 2013. She was part of the first all women spacewalk in October 2019. She also explored Antarctica during a year-long research mission.

Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, a farm boy turned fighter pilot from Ontario, will be the first from his nation to make a moon mission. A 50-year-old husband and father of three, he also will be the first non-American to head to the moon. 

Commander: 'It's not about us'

The four-member crew is led by Commander Reid Wiseman, a 50-year-old retired test pilot from Baltimore who served as NASA’s chief astronaut and spent 165 days aboard the space station in 2014. He is a widower who lost his wife to cancer in 2020.

The crew has been working closely together since 2023, chatting it up during press conferences and slipping into black shades and flight uniforms for promotional photo ops.

"We understand why so many people focus on our names, why our pictures hang all over the center," Glover said on the Houston We Have a Podcast program.

"... it’s not about us; we try very hard to make it not about us. It’s about landing on the moon and eventually landing on Mars, and it’s about the next thing."

J.D. Gallop is a criminal justice/breaking news reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Gallop at 321-917-4641, [email protected] or X, formerly known as Twitter: @JDGallop.