The last time any person has walked on the moon was back in December 1975, which was about 45 years ago. Nasa is trying to change that by sending a person back to the moon as soon as 2024. The new mission will be called Artemis, the Greek god of the wilderness and the Moon. The astronauts that will be on the mission will be Joseph Acaba, Kayla Barron, Raja Chari, Matthew Dominick, Victor Glover Jr., Warren “Woody” Hoburg, Jonny Kim, Christina Koch, Kjell Lindgren, Nicole Mann, Anne McClain, Jessica Meir, Jasmin Moghbeli, Kate Rubins, Frank Rubio, Scott Tingle, Jessica Watkins, and Stephanie Wilson. The Artemis mission will be the first mission to the moon that has a woman on it.

The Artemis program will include much more than just bringing people back to the moon. It will also deploy a space station that will orbit the moon, allow scientists to conduct experiments there, and make getting to the moon easier. There will be about four astronauts in the space station at all times, and they will stay there for one to three months. 11 companies include SpaceX, Blue Origin, are helping Nasa develop the rocket that will take the astronauts to the moon. Artemis’s cost is unknown yet, but Nasa estimates that it will be around 28 billion dollars.

Getting people to the moon is not going to be a piece of cake, though. Nasa only has four years to get to the moon, and they still have a lot of work to do. The space station that will orbit the moon is called Gateway, and Nasa still needs to make a plan on building it and whether they will use it in the Artemis mission or not. Nasa also said that they might need an extra one billion dollars in 2020, but so far, Congress has only given them 600 million, which is 400 million dollars short. Without the extra 400 million dollars Nasa will need to cut back on its budget and it will be harder for the mission to work.

As the Artemis mission continues its development, it looks like after 45 years, humanity might finally return to the moon.