FIJ
In 2024, 24 countries will begin a new era of space exploration by putting the first woman and person of colour on the moon.
Dubbed the Artemis Program, the mission of the alliance is to put humans back on the moon for the first time since the 1972 US Apollo mission.
This mission, led by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the US, will not only get humans that far but looks to explore getting humans on Mars by the 2030s.
As of March 2022, 75 women had been to space, but none had walked the surface of the moon. Between 1969 and 1972 however, NASA conducted six missions there involving 12 men.
Reaching the moon is no mean feat, but reaching Mars is an even sterner test for NASA, and that is the goal of the Artemis Program.
Steven Swanson, former NASA astronaut, captured the gravity of the mission in a conversation with How It Works magazine in November 2020.
Swanson said, “The real goal is Mars. And we will use the moon as a testbed because Mars is a very difficult mission. It’s going to take almost three years, and you can’t come home early on a Mars mission. It’s a seven or eight-month journey to get there and you have to wait 15 months there for the planets to align correctly again before you return.”
NIGERIA AND THE ARTEMIS ACCORDS
