On the 60th anniversary of human spaceflight, NASA has decided to include women in the next crewed lunar landing.
NASA’s Artemis programme aims to land the first woman on the moon. But why is this so?
Monday (April 12) will mark the 60th anniversary of human spaceflight, or 60 years since Soviet pilot and cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space on April 12, 1961. Following this historical moment, NASA launched the first American into space and landed the first humans on the moon in just a few years.
During NASA Apollo programme, 12 different astronauts walked on the moon’s surface. One thing these moonwalkers all had in common was that they were all men. The astronaut profile was extremely rigid in the agency’s early decades; most astronauts were test pilots in their 30s, and all were white men.
Since then, the narrow definition of what it means to be an astronaut has grown, as has society as a whole, and the astronaut profile has gradually evolved to include a broader range of qualified space explorers. NASA’s latest crewed moon landing programme, Artemis, aims to return humans to the lunar surface, including women this time.
This milestone comes more than half a century into NASA’s history, and according to astronauts, historians, and the agency itself, landing a woman on the moon will not be the final or ultimate achievement for diversity and inclusion in space. It is, however, the next logical step.
Why is a woman landing on the moon?
NASA’s retired astronaut Peggy Whitson, a biochemist who became the first women non-military chief at the NASA Astronaut Office after breaking records, told Space.com she thought that NASA “want to promote and promote interest in the flight into the moon,” she said during the interview, pointing out women’s activities in Artemis.
“I think flying to the moon is the next logical step for us to build the infrastructure needed to travel further and to reach the Mars,” added Whitson.
“We know that it was all men in the 1960s, the latest time we went to the moon. So we correct a mistake of the past, “In an interview with the spaceflight historian and writer Amy Shira Teitel told Space.com. “The intentional NASA inclusion of women in the anticipated lunar landing I believe it is to show inclusiveness.”
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