NASA sends the first black female astronauts to the moon

NASA is preparing to launch a mission to the moon, and it’s making history for more reasons than one.

The space agency’s Artemis II launch marks the first U.S. trip to the moon in more than 50 years. It will also carry the first black female astronaut and the first female astronaut to travel to the moon, although the mission will be a flyby without landing on the surface.

The launch, which was scheduled for early February and has now been postponed, will carry four astronauts around the moon and back, including Victor Glover and Christina Koch, the first black astronauts and the first female astronauts, respectively, to make the trip.

This mission follows the successful launch of Artemis I in 2022, which was uncrewed, and represents NASA’s next step toward eventually sending astronauts to Mars.

“The benefits of the Artemis program are technological, but they are also cultural,” Glover, a U.S. Navy captain who traveled to the International Space Station, said in a 2024 NASA video. “What really means something to me is the inspiration that will come from him, inspiring future generations to reach for the moon, literally to reach for the moon.”

Koch began her career at NASA, where she started as an engineer and continued to conduct scientific research before becoming an astronaut in 2013, also traveling to the International Space Station.

“The only thing I’m more excited about is that we’ll be carrying your enthusiasm, your ambition and your dreams with us on this mission,” Koch said at the 2023 press conference when the mission’s astronauts were announced.

This mission builds on decades of NASA’s work, including lessons learned from its previously failed endeavors, said Danielle Wood, a professor in the Department of Astronautics at MIT.

“NASA has been thinking through this whole process, which has taken two decades, that what we’re going to do is prepare the government to focus on these harder next-generation missions and be able to do things that haven’t already been proven,” Wood told CNBC.

Wood said she’s also grateful that NASA has committed to sending more diverse astronauts into space who “represent society in a more broad way.” Although the space agency initially focused on military training for astronauts, it said opening up these requirements has led to exciting developments.

“There are still many firsts, many glass ceilings, that Black women, and Black men and women in general, have to break — and that is still real,” Wood added.

She said the mission will include more than just an expedition to the moon, too. NASA will conduct scientific research on astronaut health, rocket and lunar science. The mission is also working in cooperation with other countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Germany, as part of “good faith” agreements to pool resources for lunar research, Wood said.

“This is just one step to this new, larger form of operations,” she said.

Space historian Amy Shira Tittle, who has been studying space for more than two decades, said Artemis 2 is the beginning of the next chapter in NASA research.

“It represents a new era of leaving low Earth orbit, which we haven’t done since 1972,” she told CNBC. “It’s still an important step because ultimately, we’ll have some information that can be applied to whatever the next step may be.”

However, Tittle still has doubts about whether this launch will be the first step towards a permanent presence on the Moon. Between budget constraints, multiple launch delays and complex political factors, Tittle said launching the rocket for this mission is “widely viewed as highly infeasible.”

This comes despite the fact that the space sector – and the journey back to the moon – has become more crowded.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX announced earlier this month that it would shift its efforts from Mars explorations to lunar explorations. Texas-based rocket and spacecraft maker Aerospace firefly and a Houston-based space startup Intuitive machines They both sent spacecraft to the moon.

NASA plans to retire the International Space Station in favor of smaller space stations focused on the Moon and Mars, as costs increase. The US Senate has also introduced legislation to support NASA’s progress and create thousands of aviation jobs, especially in Alabama, where Marshall Space Flight Center is located.

Although the launch of Artemis II will mark an important step in NASA’s history, Tittle said she chose to remain cautiously optimistic about the future of space exploration, despite the obstacles.

“A lot of the challenges facing this program right now stem from politics, not from the astronauts or the engineers, they just stem from the fact that space is so complex and so embedded in politics and so expensive that it’s hard to get excited about this as the next step when everything else seems so weak,” Tittle said.