NASA all set to send the first woman to moon in its next planned manned mission in 2024

Ladies (and gentlemen), man (and woman) to return to the Moon.

By ET Bureau | Dec 12, 2020, 09.59 AM IST

Nasa will be sending a manned mission to the Moon again — with at least one woman.

First, the good news. The lunatic decision to end manned missions to the Moon has been reversed. Forty-eight years after Apollo 17 dropped off Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt for three days on the edge of the ancient lava sea Mare Serenitatis (leaving Ronald Evans in the space can orbiting above) on December 11, 1972, Nasa will be sending a manned mission to the Moon again — with at least one woman.

The programme, Artemis — this time named aptly after the Greek goddess of the Moon instead of the Greek god of the, duh, Sun — is tentatively scheduled to be in three parts: an unmanned flight in end-2021, a crewed fly-by in 2023, and Artemis 3 getting boots on lunar ground in 2024.

The first set of probables for Artemis comprise 18 astronauts, nine of them men. The last time, humans were carrying mice — four male one female — for an experiment. None of the rodents landed. This time, they should and make the Moon murine. ‘Our goal is to go to the moon sustainably, to learn how to live and work on another world,’ said a Nasa administrator as if talking about climate change.

Which brings us to the bad news — Isro’s Gaganyaan 3’s threecrew mission to outer space in 2022 doesn’t look so hot now. So what if it’ll be three Indians up there, and that ‘We can do it the cheapest!’? To Mars, we say. And (wo)manned!

Out Of This World: The Many Ways You Can Explore Outer Space Without Being An Astronaut

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When Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa announced earlier this week that he wanted a companion to accompany him on a voyage to the Moon, it marked just the latest instance that an ordinary citizen could conceivably fly to outer space.

There have been a few private citizens before him who have expressed a desire to indulge in a spot of space tourism, while a few enterprising organisations also offer the same deal to people willing to pay top dollar. Here are all the ways one can go into outer space without actually being an astronaut.