TEMPO.CO, Jakarta – Nasa on Monday, August 8, 2022, announced that he would consider each of the agency’s astronauts for the Artemis lunar mission during assignments. This initiative canceled the 2020 announcement that had selected 18 astronauts for this mission, which NASA then called Team Artemis.

“From what I see, everyone from the age of 42 astronaut our active team is qualified for the Artemis mission,” NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, who is the chief astronaut office at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, told reporters during the briefing, as quoted by Space. “We wanted to form the right team for this mission.”

NASA released the news during the mission Artemis 1 is preparing to return to the runway on August 18 for an earliest moon launch on August 29. The mission will test the Space Launch System (SLS) mega-rocket and Orion spacecraft to prepare for future crewed missions to the lunar surface, if all goes according to plan.

Wiseman promised that the Artemis 2 mission would be announced soon, saying astronauts would “break down the door” to secure locations for all future lunar missions. “We hope by the end of this year,” he said of the Artemis 2 mission. The mission’s launch is slated for 2024 at the earliest.

The list of eligible astronauts appears to have grown further in recent months as NASA changed lifetime radiation exposure requirements to provide the same rating regardless of age or gender.

In the past, female astronauts have said they were discriminated against under the old terms, which allowed men to get more radiation – and therefore more time in space.

NASA recently sought feedback from the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine for the new standard, which the academy endorsed in its 2021 report.

Wiseman, who called previous radiation standards draconian, said everything was now evened out, adding: “It doesn’t matter if you’re a man, if you’re a woman. It’s exactly the same thing.”

All genders will be eligible for Artemis as well as all ages, with the current body of astronauts being between their 20s and 60s. “As long as you’re healthy, we’ll load you onto a rocket and launch you off-planet,” Wiseman said.

Artemis 2 will include a Canadian on board in exchange for the country’s commitment to build a robotic arm called Canadarm3 to service the Gateway space station. (Canada has yet to name its astronauts, but will likely do so around the same time as NASA; the country’s space agency has four active astronauts).

So far, no other international astronaut slots have been confirmed for the first lunar mission, which will see the crew in lunar orbit before the Artemis 3 crew land on the program.

SPACE

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