24 July 2021, marks the 52nd anniversary of NASA’s Apollo 11 moon landing. On this day in 1969, astronaut Neal Armstrong became the first person to step on the lunar surface, famously proclaiming: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” 

Fellow astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins accompanied Armstrong on the historic mission. In total, the Apollo Space program sent six crewed missions to the moon between 1969 and 1972. Apollo 13 was forced to return early due to mechanical failures, and was the only mission that failed. All the astronauts who walked on the moon were men. 

Apollo 17 was the last of the Apollo moon landings. During that mission in 1972, Gene Cernan, the last astronaut to walk on the moon, famously declared: “We leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind.”

The Artemis Program

On the 52-year anniversary of Cernan’s prediction, NASA will take humanity on its next giant leap forward. In 2024, the space agency plans to send its first female astronaut to the lunar surface via the Artemis program, NASA’s first crewed moon mission since Apollo 17. The mission’s feminine title, named after the Greek moon goddess Artemis, who is the twin sister of the sun god Apollo, is no coincidence. The emblem that NASA designated for the mission is a woman’s face looking towards the sky

Out of the 18 astronauts who will take part in the program, 9 are women. One of these female astronauts will become the first woman ever to step on the moon. Which of them will make the leap has yet to be decided, but she is expected to be a person of color (so far, only white men have walked on the moon).

The Artemis program will prepare NASA for future crewed missions to Mars, a planet that is over 38 million miles (62 million kilometers) from ours. To date, only robots known as “Mars Rovers” have been able to travel to and explore the Red Planet. A crewed round trip mission to Mars could take many months to years to complete

Learn more about the Artemis Program

Launch your own Rocket

Do you want students to build and launch a rocket made out of a soda bottle and powered with an air pump and consider the forces on a rocket, Newton’s Laws, and other principles and challenges of actual space vehicle launch? Download the IEEE TryEngineering lesson plan Water Rocket Launch.