“That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”
We’ve all heard this famous Neil Armstrong quote, spoken the first time any human in history went on the moon back in 1969. However, while a man was on the moon, there’s still yet to be any women or people of color following in his footsteps. When told this, sophomore Anya Fatemi-Haque says, “I think that’s very disappointing and I think NASA should do a better job of that.” Now, NASA has been working towards this goal, with the launches of its new mission: the Artemis mission.
The Artemis mission is sort of play-on words for the famous Apollo missions, as Artemis and Apollo are twin Greek gods, Apollo of the sun, and his sister Artemis of the moon. This mission is centered around searching for water and resources on the moon, as well as acting as a “stepping stone to Mars”, according to NASA. It is also working to establish a long-term lunar base. While the Apollo mission is famous for being the first mission successfully getting any humans to the moon, they were all white men, as this mission was completed in the 60’s and 70’s. “It is interesting that no people of color have been on the moon,” Ms. Gray, one of our Broad Run librarians, commented. About women, she also added, “ If [women] want to, they should be able to, but it is a rigorous program, and I do know somebody that went through it… there’s so many factors that go into physically having the stamina to do it.” This could be one of the reasons for why no women have been yet, as it’s just a very hard program for anyone, any gender, to get through.
This month, NASA launched Artemis II on Wednesday, April 1st, scheduled to come back on Saturday, April 11th. Artemis II is bringing a woman (mission specialist Christina Koch) and a person of color (pilot Victor Glover) around the moon. This mission is the first time both a woman and a person of color have traveled around the moon, and it also sets a record for the greatest distance ever traveled from Earth at 252,000 miles. Artemis II is building up so that Artemis III, currently tentatively scheduled for 2028, will be able to bring people of these groups to the moon’s surface.
Additionally, the astronauts on Artemis II have viewed sides of the moon never seen by humans before due to flight paths and timing. Striking the hearts of people around the world, commander Reid Wiseman of Artemis II named a newly discovered moon crater after his wife who died of cancer in 2020, Carroll Taylor Wiseman.
Along with the popularity of the new hit sci-fi movie “Project Hail Mary”, Artemis II is bringing mass attention back to something left behind after the Apollo missions: space, and what’s beyond our world.
