HOUSTON — As NASA prepares to select the crew for the second Artemis mission, the agency’s chief astronaut says the entire astronaut corps, not a pre-announced subset, is eligible for this flight and future missions to the moon.
At a briefing Aug. 5 at Johnson Space Center about the upcoming uncrewed Artemis 1 mission, Reid Weisman, chief of the astronaut office, said he expects the four-member crew to fly Artemis 2 to be selected soon.
“The question everyone will be asking is when are we going to crew Artemis 2? We hope that will happen later this year,” he said. This mission is expected to launch no earlier than 2024.
Artemis 2 will be the first crewed Orion flight to orbit the Moon on a flight lasting about 10 days. The four-person crew will include one Canadian astronaut as part of a December 2020 agreement between NASA and the Canadian Space Agency regarding Canada’s contribution to the Canadarm3 robotic arm for the lunar portal.
NASA has not said whether other international partners, such as Europe or Japan, will fly Artemis 2 astronauts. As for the agency’s own astronauts, Wiseman said the entire 42-person astronaut corps will be considered for this mission and more the late flights of Artemis.
“The way I see it, every one of our 42 active astronauts is eligible for an Artemis mission,” he said, something he emphasized several times during the briefing. “We want to put together 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 choose crews at least for initial Artemis missions.
“My fellow Americans, I present to you the heroes of the future who will take us back to the moon and beyond, the Artemis generation,” Pence said at a National Space Council meeting in December 2020, where he announced the 18 astronauts who will make up the team. Five of the 18 attended this 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 lineup of our Artemis astronauts,” Bridenstine said. “I want to be clear: there will be more.”
However, Wiseman emphasized that he will 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 break down the door for 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 one limit. A June 2021 report by the National Academies endorsed such a proposal, noting that it “creates equal opportunity for spaceflight” over previous standards that set lower limits for women.
Wiseman said those earlier “draconian” standards have been replaced by one restriction. “We have leveled all radiation limits. It doesn’t matter if you’re a man, if you’re a woman, it’s all the same.”
“Our ultimate goal is for the United States of America to be half male, half female.” Well, space should be at least that,” he said. “If we can’t make these spacecraft fair and we can’t fly any human on them, then we have to look at our systems and reevaluate.”
There are also no age restrictions on Artemis mission assignments, he said, noting that the astronaut corps includes people in their late 20s to mid-60s. “As long as you’re healthy, we’ll load you onto a rocket and blast you off the planet.”
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