NASA has flown 24 white American men to the moon. Now it's finally sending a woman, a Black astronaut, and a Canadian.

• NASA revealed the astronauts of its first crewed moon mission since the Apollo era.
• Victor Glover, Christina Koch, Jeremy Hansen, and Reid Wiseman will fly NASA's Artemis II mission.

NASA has revealed the astronaut crew that's poised to complete the first flight around the moon in more than 50 years.

The Artemis II mission is slated to send four astronauts on a 10-day flight around the moon, aboard NASA's Orion spaceship, as soon as November 2024.

That will be the first crewed lunar mission since the Apollo era, and it's designed to lay the groundwork for NASA to build a permanent base on the surface of the moon, then eventually send astronauts to Mars.

NASA announced the astronauts of Artemis II on Monday: Christina Koch, Victor Glover, and Reid Wiseman, as well as Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency.

That means this mission will include the first woman, the first Black person, and the first Canadian to ever fly to the moon. They won't land on the moon. But the next mission, Artemis III, is set to drop two astronauts to the lunar surface.

"Am I excited? Absolutely," Koch, an engineer who participated in the first all-female spacewalk in 2019, said during Monday's announcement event.

NASA has a diversity plan for the moon

NASA has promised that the following mission, Artemis III, will land a woman and a person of color on the moon for the first time ever.

Those will be the first boots on the lunar surface since the last Apollo moon landing, in 1972.

All 24 of the astronauts who have orbited or landed on the moon are white American men.

The addition of a Canadian astronaut to the new crew signals another ethic of NASA's Artemis plan: international collaboration.

The agency plans to leverage technology (and finances) from different nations and private companies to build its lunar base. The US and 22 other countries have signed an agreement called the Artemis Accords to establish guidelines for exploration on the moon and beyond.

"It is not lost on any of us that the United States could choose to go back to the moon by themselves. But America has made a very deliberate choice over decades to curate a global team," Hansen said.

The second reason a Canadian is going to the moon, he added, is "Canada's can-do attitude."

NASA is going to the moon, then Mars, step by step

NASA built its most powerful rocket yet, the Space Launch System, as well as the Orion spaceship, for the Artemis program. It tested that system successfully on its first uncrewed flight around the moon, the Artemis I mission, last year.

The agency is also working with SpaceX to turn the company's Starship into a lunar lander for the Artemis III moon touchdown. For that mission, Orion is supposed to dock with Starship in lunar orbit so that two astronauts can board the SpaceX vehicle for their moon landing.

First, though, Artemis II must send Koch, Glover, Hansen, and Wiseman safely around the moon and back.

"This is a big day. We have a lot to celebrate. And it's so much more than the four names that have been announced," said Glover, who was a member of the first crew to fly aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon spaceship in 2020.

Glover was the first Black astronaut to serve a rotation on the International Space Station. He is now the pilot for Artemis II.

"We need to celebrate this moment in human history, because Artemis II is more than a mission to the moon and back. It's more than a mission that has to happen before we send people to the surface of the moon. It is the next step on the journey that gets humanity to Mars," Glover said.