NASA releases epic trailer before Artemis 2 crew reveal 'for all humanity'; WATCH

It is just a few days until NASA announces the crew that will launch to the Moon under the Artemis 2 mission targeted for launch in 2024. The announcement is scheduled on April 3 during a special event at the Johnson Space Center in Houston that starts at 8:30 pm IST. Ahead of the revelation, NASA has released a trailer to ensure the viewers are on the edge of their seats. 

"It's a new era of pioneers, stars sailors, thinkers and adventurers!" NASA chief Bill Nelson can be heard narrating in the video with an epic soundtrack inflating in the background. The Artemis 2 mission will be as significant as the Apollo 7 mission which launched on October 11, 1968. Apollo 7 was the first crewed flight of the Apollo program and testing of the flight systems in space paved way for the first Moon landing in 1969. 

Who will be selected for Artemis 2?

While we do not know who exactly will NASA choose for the first crewed flight of the Artemis Program, what we do know is that there will be four astronauts, and one of them will be a Canadian national and the other three most likely from the US. What we also know is that the Canadian Space Agency has four active astronauts and one of them is a woman. NASA, on the other hand, has 16 active female astronauts (out of 41 in total) according to its updated list. While it is not guaranteed for a woman to be part of Artemis 2 crew, one would definitely have the privilege to become the first woman to walk on the Moon during Artemis 3 (probably) in 2025. 

Artemis 2 mission profile

(Artemis 2 map; Image: NASA)

Artemis 2, the first crewed flight in the program, will be a ten-day long Moon mission. During those ten days, the mission teams will test the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the European Space Agency-made Orion spacecraft where the astronauts will live and work for ten days. With Artemis 1, NASA and its collaborators were able to find out what worked and what did not. For example, Orion once went incommunicado for 47 minutes seven days after its launch on November 16, which called for a solid connection between Orion and the Deep Space Network (DSN). "During their mission, four astronauts will confirm all of the spacecraft’s systems operate as designed with people aboard in the actual environment of deep space," NASA said in a statement.