Who is Artemis? NASA’s latest Moon mission named for lunar goddess, icon of feminism

WITH A RESCHEDULED launch date as soon as this Saturday, Sept. 3, Artemis I will send a rocket without a crew on a monthlong journey around the Moon. The program aims to increase women’s participation in space exploration — 30 percent of its engineers are women. In addition, the Artemis I mission will carry two mannequins designed to study the effects of radiation on women’s bodies so that NASA can learn how to protect female astronauts better.

Female astronauts are currently less likely to be selected for missions than men because their bodies tend to hit NASA’s maximum acceptable threshold of radiation earlier. NASA expects to bring the first woman and person of color to the Moon on Artemis III sometime after 2024.