The United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration is planning a mission to land the first woman and the next man on the Moon by 2024.

The US space agency on Monday detailed the next steps under its Artemis programme for the Moon including the latest Phase 1 plans to land the first woman and the next man on the surface of the Moon in 2024.

“In its formal plan, NASA captures Artemis progress to date, identifying the key science, technology and human missions, as well as the commercial and international partnerships that will ensure we continue to lead in exploration and achieve our ambitious goal to land astronauts on the Moon,” NASA said in a release.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said, We’re going back to the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and inspiration for a new a generation of explorers. As we build up a sustainable presence, we’re also building momentum toward those first human steps on the Red Planet.”

The mission will explore the lunar South Pole.

“The science that we would be doing is really very different than anything we’ve done before,” said Bridenstine as quoted by an AFP report. “We have to remember during the Apollo era, we thought the moon was bone dry. Now we know that there’s lots of water ice and we know that it’s at the South Pole.”

The estimated the cost of this mission deadline is $28 billion as per the report. Out of this budget, $16 billion will be spent on building a lunar landing module, for which three different projects are currently competing

NASA’s Orion vessel

The lander will carry the two astronauts in NASA’s Orion vessel.

The projects are bring developed by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin founded in partnership with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper. The remaining two projects are by Elon Musk’s SpaceX and a company called Dynetics.

NASA will conduct a series of tests this fall for its Orion spacecraft. The first flight of Artemis I will be unmanned and is scheduled for November 2021.

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