HOUSTON, Tx — After evaluating more than 8,000 applications, NASA announced that it will unveil its 2025 class of astronaut candidates for the Artemis II moon mission during a ceremony on Monday.
According to NASA’s website, the selected candidates will undergo nearly two years of training before they become flight-eligible astronauts for agency missions to low Earth orbit, the Moon, and ultimately, Mars.
NASA is also expecting to host a series of briefings on the upcoming Artemis II mission, slated for no later than April 2026. The test flight, a launch of the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and Orion spacecraft, will send NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, along with CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, on an approximately 10-day mission around the Moon.
Artemis II will further help determine the systems and hardware required for human deep space exploration.
The candidates chosen will be vital, as NASA has noted that this mission is the first crewed flight under its Artemis campaign, marking another step toward new U.S.-crewed missions on the Moon’s surface that will help the agency prepare to send American astronauts to Mars.
