Crew portrait for Artemis II, from left: NASA Astronauts
Christina Koch, Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman, Canadian
Space Agency Astronaut Jeremy Hansen.

NASA on Monday named the four astronauts who will fly to the
moon by the end of next year, including one woman and three
men.

The three Americans and one Canadian were introduced during
a ceremony in Houston, home to the nation’s astronauts as well
as Mission Control.

"This is humanity’s crew," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

The four astronauts will be the first to fly NASA’s Orion capsule, launching atop a Space Launch System rocket from Kennedy
Space Center no earlier than late 2024. They will not land or even
go into lunar orbit, but rather fly around the moon and head
straight back to Earth, a prelude to a lunar landing by two others
a year later.

Provided this next 10-day moonshot goes well, NASA aims to
land two astronauts on the moon by 2025 or so.

NASA picked from 41 active astronauts for its first Artemis crew
and Canada had four candidates. (MARCIA DUNN AP Aerospace Writer)

Pioneer 10, the world’s first outer-planetary probe,was
launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a mission to
Jupiter, the solar system’s largest planet, on this day
in 1972.

In December 1973, after successfully negotiating the
asteroid belt and a distance of 620 million miles,
Pioneer 10 reached Jupiter and sent back to Earth
the first close-up images of the spectacular gas giant.

In June 1983, the NASA spacecraft left the solar system
and the next day radioed back the first scientific data on
interstellar space. NASA officially ended the Pioneer 10
project on March 31, 1997, with the spacecraft having
traveled a distance of some six billion miles.

(FOXNEWS) – John Glenn, Marine Corps combat pilot, pioneer
of human exploration and later a longtime United States senator,
became the first American to orbit the Earth on this day in history,
Feb. 20, 1962.

"Glenn’s ride into space, a great technical accomplishment, held
even greater significance for the country," says the website of the
John & Annie Glenn Museum in the astronaut’s hometown of New Concord, Ohio.

Astronaut John Glenn photographed in space by an
automatic sequence motion picture camera during
his historic orbital flight on "Friendship 7."

BRIAN THOMAS

At 11:38 a.m. EST, on January 28, 1986, the space shuttle
Challenger lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and
Christa McAuliffe is on her way to becoming the first
ordinary U.S. civilian to travel into space. McAuliffe, a
37-year-old high school social studies teacher from New
Hampshire, won a competition that earned her a place
among the seven-member crew of the Challenger. She
underwent months of shuttle training but then, beginning
January 23, was forced to wait six long days as the
Challenger‘s launch countdown was repeatedly delayed
because of weather and technical problems. Finally, on
January 28, the shuttle lifted off.

Seventy-three seconds later, hundreds on the ground,
including Christa’s family, stared in disbelief as the
shuttle broke up in a forking plume of smoke and fire.

Millions more watched the wrenching tragedy unfold on
live television. There were no survivors.

spectators at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral,
Fla. react after they witnessed the explosion of the space
shuttle Challenger.

This photo provided by NASA shows the crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger mission 51L. Front row from left are
Michael J. Smith, Francis R. (Dick) Scobee, and Ronald E. McNair. Front row from left are Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, and Judith Resnik. (NASA/AP)