The Space Agency will be taking a woman and a black man on the lunar mission – a first for NASA

After a 50-year hiatus, NASA is going back to the moon.

U.S. Space Agency NASA has named the four astronauts who will take humanity back to the lunar surface.

Christina Koch will become the first woman astronaut ever assigned to a lunar mission.

She holds the record for longest continuous time in space by a woman, of 328 days.

Victor Glover will be the first black astronaut to take part in a moon mission.

All the previous crewed missions to the Moon were made by white men.

They will join Reid Wiseman and Jeremy Hansen to fly a capsule around the Moon late next year or early in 2025.

The astronauts won’t land on the Moon, but their mission will pave the way for a touchdown by a subsequent crew.

They will now begin a period of intense training to get themselves ready.

The newly-named astronauts will climb into Orion for Artemis II and a journey to and from the Moon that’s likely to take about 10 days.

NASA doesn’t yet have a system capable of taking astronauts down to the lunar surface.

This is being developed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company. Called Starship, the vehicle is due to start flight testing in the next few weeks.