Small Karoo town to help land first woman on the moon
Home empowerment Small Karoo town to help land first woman on the moon

Small Karoo town to help land first woman on the moon

written by Savanna Douglas November 16, 2022
Small Karoo town to help land first woman on the moon

The South African National Space Agency (SANSA) has just partnered up with NASA to open a ‘deep-space ground station’ in the Small Karoo town of Matjiesfontein. If the fact that SA has teamed up with NASA isn’t exciting enough, the NASA programme, Artemis, aims to land the first woman and person of colour on the moon by 2025!

How are we involved?

The Matjiesfontein region based in SA’s Karoo, is a semi-desert area chosen by NASA for its clear skies and lack of rainfall, making it a great spot to monitor outer space from. The deep-space ground station is one of three that will be assisting NASA on future voyages to the moon and Mars. The other two stations are based in the US and Australia.

The first of these outer-space missions will be Artemis, which aims to land the first woman, and person of colour, safely on the moon. So far, only 12 people have ever walked the moon, all of them have been men.

Members of SANSA and Nasa visited the town with a population of just over 400 last week, celebrating the launch of the station.

When will the space mission kick-off?

Although the space stations will be operative and in testing long before, the Artemis programme aims to kick off by 2025.

Badri Younes, deputy associate administrator and manager at NASA’s Space Communication and Navigation unit told Reuters:

“This is going to be one of three stations supporting the communication with all of our astronauts in and around the moon and providing viable services to our entire Moon to Mars programme.”

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Feature Image: Unsplash

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