Who are the astronauts on the Artemis II mission to the moon?
Four astronauts will soon partake in a 685,000-mile historic journey to the moon.
The Artemis II rocket launch, scheduled for Wednesday evening, will mark the first time humans have flown beyond low-Earth orbit since the Apollo 17 mission that landed on the moon in 1972.
The mission will involve a lunar flyby in which the astronauts will help facilitate the testing of critical spacecraft systems.
Three Americans and one Canadian will be aboard the Orion spacecraft -- named "Integrity" -- over the course of 10 days.
Who is the Artemis II crew?
The team consists of Victor Glover, Christina Hammock Koch and Reid Wiseman of NASA and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency.
Reid Wiseman is the commander of the Artemis II mission. He is a former NASA chief astronaut, a U.S. Navy test pilot and he has already spent 165 days in space on the International Space Station.
Victor J. Glover Jr. is the mission pilot. He's a NASA astronaut and a U.S. Navy captain. He's the first Black astronaut to live on the ISS for a long-duration assignment, spending six months on the Crew-1 mission.
Glover will also be the first person of color to go to the moon.
Christina Koch is a mission specialist, and she holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman at 328 days. A member of the Space Camp Hall of Fame, Koch attended the camp at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center multiple times in her youth.
She also made history with fellow astronaut Jessica Mer in October 2019 when they performed the first all-female spacewalk. Koch was selected as an astronaut in 2013 and has completed six spacewalks.
Jeremy Hansen is the other mission specialist and part of the Canadian Space Agency. As part of the Artemis II crew, he will become the first non-U.S. astronaut to fly to the moon. Hansen is a colonel and a CF-18 fighter pilot and helped NASA with astronaut training and mission operations. Artemis II will mark Hansen's first mission in space.
The next phase in the series of missions will be Artemis III, expected to launch sometime later in 2027. It will test rendezvous and docking capabilities between Orion and commercial spacecraft needed to land astronauts on the moon.
ABC News' Briana Alvarado, Matthew Glasser and Mary Kekatos contributed to this report.
