Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Hammock Koch, from the US space agency, NASA, and Jeremy Hansen, from the Canadian space agency, CSA, will be orbiting the Moon aboard the Orion spacecraft.

The mission, with a total duration of around 10 days, is the first manned mission of NASA's new lunar program, Artemis. For the first time, a woman astronaut, a black astronaut and a Canadian astronaut will be aboard a space flight to the Moon's vicinity.

After this mission, NASA hopes to put astronauts back on the Moon's surface in 2025, including the first woman and the first black man.

Only American astronauts have traveled to the Moon, namely 12 who set foot on its surface between 1969 and 1972 with the Apollo program.

In a statement, quoted by Lusa, NASA said that the Artemis II mission will be commanded by astronaut Reid Wiseman and piloted by Victor Glover, who will become the first black man to fly to the Moon.

The crew also includes Canadian Jeremy Hansen, who will be making his spaceflight debut, and Christina Hammock Koch, who worked on the International Space Station as a flight engineer, took part in the first all-female spacewalks and is the longest-serving woman in space.

According to NASA, the Artemis II mission aims to "test the life support systems" of the Orion spacecraft and "validate the capabilities and techniques needed for humans to live and work in deep space".

This mission will succeed Artemis I, which tested the launch of NASA's new lunar rocket, the SLS, at the end of 2022, after several setbacks and delays, and the placement of the Orion spacecraft in the Moon's orbit, its re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere and its docking in the Pacific Ocean.

The spacecraft, which has a European service module that provides all the crew's basic needs, can carry four astronauts and is partially reusable.

The SLS rocket, NASA's most powerful, is not reusable, so new units have to be built for new missions.