Lunar exploration has been in the news lately, with China’s Chang’e-5 capsule returning with rock samples, and ambitious American plans to send Artemis II around our moon (with the first ever Canadian on the mission) in 2023. If successful, it will represent the first time since the final Apollo mission that humans will fly so far from home. Artemis III is even more ambitious: humanity will return to the lunar surface.

At least one of the Artemis III crew likely will be female. The long-term hope is to establish the Gateway, a station from which missions could be launched further into the solar system. A permanent station for launching missions had been the original intention in the 1950s, though von Braun and others envisioned an earth-orbit space station.