Women of NASA - Artemis Female Launch Team

The women who comprise the Artemis launch team are photographed inside Firing Room 1 of the Launch Control Center at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Feb. 10, 2023. In the center of the front row is NASA’s first female Launch Director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson. The team, which is about 30% women, launched the agency’s Artemis I mission – the first in an increasingly complex series of missions to return humans to the Moon – from Kennedy’s Launch Pad 39B on Nov. 16, 2022. The primary goal of Artemis I was to thoroughly test the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft’s integrated systems before crewed missions to the lunar surface. Under Artemis, NASA aims to land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon and establish sustainable lunar exploration in the near future.