Story at a glance
- NASA is aiming to put humans on the moon by 2024.
- If all goes according to plan, it will be the first time a woman steps foot on the lunar surface.
- While 18 members are named for the program, not all will land on the face of the moon.
On Wednesday, Vice President Mike Pence named 18 NASA astronauts who are set to embark on a return mission to the moon.
“My fellow Americans, I give you the heroes of the future who’ll carry us back to the Moon and beyond – the Artemis generation,” Pence said during a news conference at the National Space Council at Cape Canaveral, Fla.
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Artemis I is scheduled to launch in 2021 and will include two test flights around the moon in unoccupied vessels. In 2023, Artemis will launch with astronauts on board and Artemis III will take astronauts to the moon’s surface in 2024.
It will be the first time humans step foot on the surface of the moon since 1972.
Nine of the 18 astronauts selected for NASA’s Artemis moon-landing program are women.
That means — assuming President-elect Joe Biden follows suit with NASA’s existing Artemis program — the first woman to ever step foot on the lunar surface will come from this elite group in 2024.
“To us, it isn’t really a personal achievement for us, it is paying homage and tribute to the generations of women and other minorities that really were the boundary-pushers that truly broke those glass ceilings to let us be here today,” Jessica Meir, an astronaut chosen for the program, told Space.com.
Meir was chosen to be an astronaut in 2013 and has spent 205 days in space and carried out three spacewalks over the course of her career. She participated in the first all-women spacewalks in October 2019 along with astronaut Christina Koch, who is also among the Artemis astronauts.
Koch holds the record for longest single spaceflight by a woman, with 328 days in space and six spacewalks. In the same class as Koch and Meir is Anne McClain, who spent 204 days in space and carried out two spacewalks.
Kate Rubins, who is currently orbiting Earth on her second flight aboard the International Space Station, was also named among the group. She was the first person to sequence DNA in space.
Other female astronauts chosen for the mission include Kayla Barron, Nicole Mann, Jasmin Moghbeli, Jessica Watkins and Stephanie Wilson.
“It is amazing to think that the next man and first woman on the Moon are among the names that we just read. The Artemis Team astronauts are the future of American space exploration — and that future is bright,” Pence said Wednesday.
While 18 members are named for the program, not all will land on the face of the moon.
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Published on Dec 10,2020