GREENVILLE, N.C. (WNCT) — We’re going back to the moon.
On Monday, NASA announced the four astronauts taking place in this Artemis II mission: Christina Hammock Koch, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover as well as the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen.
To the moon and beyond: ENC native set to visit outer space again on NASA mission
The launch date is set for approximately November 2024 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This is where the four will board NASA’s deep space rocket called the Space Launch System.It will be the first to test the Orion passenger spacecraft.
The journey will be about 6,400 miles beyond the moon, which equates to 230,000 miles from Earth, before looping back and heading back home.
The astronauts joined Stephen Colbert on “The Late Show” to speak about the historic mission and their top seeds in space. They also discussed what they expect to experience when the Orion spacecraft brings them back to Earth. When the crew re-enters the atmosphere, they will be traveling about seven miles a second, per the mission’s commander, Wiseman.
NASA administrator Bill Nelson said it’s going to hit the Earth’s atmosphere at 32 times the speed of sound.
