Stennis Space Center sending first woman and person of color to the moon

It could be another large leap for mankind as the NASA Stennis Space Center is gearing up to make history with deep space exploration.

In the early 1960s, Dr. Werner Van Braun once said ‘I don’t know yet what method we will use to get to the moon, but I do know that we have to go through Mississippi to get there.’

NASA plans to do this through its Artemis program, which will allow for deep space exploration. Stennis Space Center is the home of NASA’s rocket engine testing site. Test Operations Engineer Joshua Griner said, “The RS-25 engine is one of the most incredible engines ever built. It’s the Cadillac of engines.”

Instrumentation Engineer Tristan Mooney said, “We do rocket engine testing for the Artemis program. You may have recently heard of or recently seen the Artemis 1 launch. So, the four engines on the core stage, the big orange part in the center, those are RS-25 Engines.”

The launch of Artemis I was the first of four that used RS-25 engines from the retired space shuttle program. The new RS-25 engines feature 3D printed parts that are going through a series of evaluations to be used in future missions. “We want to make sure that all of the newly redesigned parts including 3D printed parts are going to work and are going to work just as effectively as the previous parts,” said Mooney.

If all goes to plan, NASA will be making another giant leap for mankind. “We’re going to be putting the first woman and first person of color on the moon. Future Artemis missions will hopefully enable a sustained human presence on the moon.”

Griner said, “We’ve had women and women of color working in NASA, doing incredible work. So, to have them bring in the fold and make that priority is an incredibly historical thing to do.”

So, what is the future of NASA space exploration? “The SLS Rocket will continue to enable us to explore deeper into space such as go to Mars.”