France, March 18 -- Koch will fly alongside NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover, and Canadian Space gency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, on a free-return trajectory around the Moon and back to Earth on a 10-day mission. The crew will not land on the lunar surface. The mission is a crewed flyby, designed to demonstrate that the systems needed for deep space travel are ready for what comes next.
Artemis II is the first crewed deep space mission since Apollo 17 in 1972, and the first since then to reach the Moon's vicinity. It will be the first crewed flight of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft around the Moon, with the goal of verifying modern human capabilities in deep space and paving the way for long-term expl...