NASA Selects Cadre of Astronauts for Artemis Missions
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NASA selects cadre of astronauts for Artemis missions - SpaceNews:
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced at the Dec. 9 meeting of the National Space Council at the Kennedy Space Center that the agency selected 18 members of its current astronaut corps for a new "Artemis Team." Those astronauts will be eligible to be assigned for future Artemis missions, starting with the Artemis 2 flight of the Orion spacecraft around the moon.
[...] The 18 astronauts - nine women and nine men - are a diverse subset of the overall NASA astronaut corps. Some have flown multiple missions and spent almost a year in space, while others are rookies yet to make their first spaceflight. Two of them, Vic Glover and Kate Rubins, are currently on the International Space Station.
[...] NASA has yet to assign crews to any Artemis missions. At a Dec. 7 media briefing to discuss a report on the science that could be done on Artemis 3, Ken Bowersox, deputy associate administrator of NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, said the "flight specific" training for that first landing mission would start a year and a half to two years before the mission. "So, we still have a little bit of time before we get there."
[...] The astronauts who are part of the Artemis Team, such as Anne McClain, did not seem concerned about when they might go on the moon during a media availability after the council meeting. "Either I'm going to walk on the moon or one of my friends is going to walk on the moon, and both of those scenarios are beyond my wildest dreams when I was a kid," she said.
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