Three of Artemis II’s four crew members are Nasa astronauts and spaceflight veterans extended stays on the international space station (ISS).

Commander Reid Wiseman, 50, is a retired US Navy captain from Baltimore, Maryland. He was selected as an astronaut in 2009, spent six months on the ISS from May to November 2014, and is a former chief of Nasa’s astronaut office.

He has two daughters with his wife Carroll, who died in 2020 from cancer. He has said he is taking a notepad and pencil with him to space to record his thoughts during the mission.

Pilot Victor Glover, 49, will become the first astronaut of color to fly beyond lower Earth orbit. From Pomona, California, he joined the astronaut corps in 2013, and flew to the ISS on the maiden operational flight of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule in 2020.

He is married with four children. His callsign, Ike, is an acronym bestowed lovingly by colleagues for “I know everything”. Glover said he will carry his Bible, wedding ring, and book of quotations from Apollo 8 astronaut Rusty Schweickart.

Mission specialist Christina Koch (pronounced Cook), 47, is already a record holder for the longest single spaceflight by an American woman, 328 days on the ISS from March 2019 to February 2020.

Koch, from Grand Rapids, Michigan, is a married engineer who became an astronaut in 2013. She will become the first woman to travel to the moon. Her personal items in space will be handwritten notes from loved ones.

Mission specialist Jeremy Hansen, 50, is the only non-American crew member, and has no previous spaceflight experience. A fighter pilot in the Royal Canadian air force, Hansen was recruited to the country’s astronaut training program in 2009.

Hansen is married with three children. Born in London, Ontario, he plans to take with him four moon-shaped pendants for his family, and maple syrup and cookies.