No woman has ever stepped foot on the moon—but that might change relatively soon.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has vowed to land the next man and the very first woman on the lunar surface by 2024 through its Artemis program—named after the Greek goddess of the moon, also Apollo's twin sister.
"We will collaborate with our commercial and international partners and establish sustainable exploration by the end of the decade," reads an official statement by the agency. No human has landed on the moon since 1972.
President Donald Trump's administration has recently granted $1.6 billion to the Artemis program, which seeks to send astronauts to space in a sustainable way that will, hopefully, eventually lead them to Mars as well.
The Artemis mission will make use of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which has completed its final structural testing earlier this month. NASA revealed in an official statement that the "SLS is the only rocket that can send Orion [a spacecraft], astronauts and cargo to the moon on a single mission," making this a historically remarkable mission in more ways than one.
This isn't the agency's first foray into women empowerment: back in May, it renamed its newest space telescope after its first female executive and just a few weeks ago it dubbed its headquarters in DC after its first African American female engineer, Mary W. Jackson. We can't wait to see what's next.
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