All of a sudden, NASA’s return to the Moon feels rather real

Enlarge / NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman (bottom), Victor Glover (top), and Christina Hammock Koch (left), and CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen (right) were announced Monday as the crew of Artemis II. (credit: NASA)

NASA on Monday staged the kind of celebratory event it has wanted to hold for five decades-the naming of a new crew to fly to the Moon.

The Artemis II mission will fly four astronauts around the Moon during an approximately week-long flight. This will be the first time that humans have left low-Earth orbit since December 1972, at the conclusion of the Apollo 17 mission.

"It's been more than a half-century since astronauts journeyed to the Moon," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Monday. "That's about to change."

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