Spaceq

On Monday, May 13, NASA contacted the media on short notice late in the afternoon saying a teleconference was being scheduled for the early evening. Scheduling a teleconference in the evening is not something NASA normally does. Whatever the substance of the call, it must be important. As it turns out the call with media was to outline a budget amendment for the Fiscal Year 2020 to provide additional funds to the Trump administration newly mandated plan for NASA to land U.S. astronauts on the moon in 2024 instead of 2028. The call with the details would in of itself be important, but at the end of the teleconference, after answering questions from the media, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine added a little something that would put the call into the NASA history books. Bridenstine announced that NASA had selected the name Artemis for the human return to the moon program. In Greek mythology, Artemis was the twin sister of Apollo and the name of NASA’s famed 60’s moon program which saw humans land on the moon