Pacific Ocean. (July 27, 2023) In this photo by MC2 Joshua Samoluk, Sailors assigned to the amphibious transport dock ship USS John P. Murtha and Explosive Ordnance Disposal Expeditionary Support Unit 1 launch the Vehicle Advanced Demonstrator for Emergency Recovery, or VADR, during an Underway Recovery Test at sea. VADR is a replica of the crew module that will be used during NASA's Artemis II mission to send four astronauts to the Moon and beyond.

NASA and the Navy will conduct a series of tests to demonstrate and evaluate the processes, procedures, and hardware used in these recovery operations for lunar missions. The U.S. Navy has unique capabilities that make it an ideal partner to support NASA, including its amphibious capabilities and the ability to deploy helicopters, launch and recover small boats, three-dimensional air search radar, and advanced medical facilities.

Artemis II is the second scheduled mission of NASA’s Orion spacecraft due to launch in November 2024. This will be the first crewed spacecraft to travel beyond earth’s low orbit to return to the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

Artemis II will carry four astronauts, including the first woman, first person of color, and first non-American to travel beyond low Earth orbit. The first woman is to be Christina Koch, who will serve as a mission specialist and the first person of color is to be Victor J. Glover, who will pilot the aircraft. The non-American is Jeremy Hansen from Canada.

This will be the second flight into space for Astronaut Koch who set a record for the longest single space flight by a woman (328 days) and she participated in the first all-female space walks.

The mission will be Glover’s second spaceflight, having previously flown on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1, which landed May 2, 2021, after 168 days in space. As a flight engineer aboard the space station for Expedition 64, he contributed to scientific investigations, technology demonstrations, and participated in four spacewalks.

Representing Canada, Hansen is making his first flight to space. A colonel in the Canadian Armed Forces and former fighter pilot, Hansen holds a Bachelor of Science in space science from Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario, and a Master of Science in physics from the same institution. He became the first Canadian to be entrusted with leading a NASA astronaut class after serving as Capcom in NASA's Mission Control Center in 2017.