On April 1, the launching of NASA’s Artemis II mission from the Kennedy Space Center marked the first time in over fifty years that a crew of astronauts was sent to orbit the moon. The crew includes pilot Victor Glover, commander Reid Wiseman, and two media specialists: Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen. This ten day mission has the primary goal of testing the Orion spacecraft and its life support systems.

“Among the crew are the first woman, first person of color, and first Canadian on a lunar mission,” Vanessa Wyche, director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, said in an interview with NBC News.

The last time humans were tasked with orbiting the moon was the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972. As such, those behind the project feel immense pressure to reach success.

“I’m a single father of two daughters,” Wiseman said in an interview with NBC’s “TODAY” show. “It’d be a lot easier just to sit on my couch and watch football for the weekend, but at the same time, there’s four humans that were put in a position to be able to go explore and do something that is very unique and rare in this civilization.

Early development started around 2013, as the task was previously designated for the Asteroid Redirect Mission. However, after its cancellation in 2017, the Artemis program was established with similar concepts reassigned to Artemis II.

“To do something that has never been done before means that your team is very likely to face failure,” Hansen said in an interview with the Canadian Space Agency, otherwise known as CSA. “I like the fact that in space, we are committed to bold goals to the extent that we will not let periodic failure stop our forward progress.”