NASA’s Artemisa space program is burning stages to try to achieve a revolutionary objective in the history of human beings: to establish a base camp on the Moon that allows maintaining a long-term presence on the Earth’s satellite.
The success of the Artemis missions will depend not only on whether we, the human species as a whole, can get to know our satellite in depth, explore it, and achieve self-sufficiency beyond Earth, but it is also the testing ground for the next step: the human presence on Mars.
NASA has made public the list of the 18 astronauts – 9 women and 9 men – who are part of a program that will begin in March 2022 with the Artemis I mission and on whose success the rest of the missions will depend.
The name of El Salvador will reach the stars thanks to Frank Rubio, an astronaut of Salvadoran origin who will travel to the Moon in 2024, in the Artemis program of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). With this, Rubio puts El Salvador on a high in a field where very few countries can afford to say that they have captured their names.
But this success did not fall from the clouds, as explained by Myrna Argueta, Frank’s mother, who lives in the department of La Unión. From the comfort of her home, Myrna assures us that the news of her son’s selection by NASA took her by surprise and has left her with enormous joy and pride in the size of the universe.
Part of Frank Rubio’s professional profile is that he belonged to the United States Army, in addition to having a doctorate degree in medicine from the Military University of Maryland, but it was not until August 2017 that he joined NASA, with the dream of being able to be sent on a mission, like his current assignment to the Moon as part of the Artemis program.
“Until now, I haven’t had the chance to go to space, I still don’t fully know what it’s like to be an astronaut, but medicine has been something that was my dream for so long, and then the feeling that you feel helping people and knowing that it’s helping you feel better” — Frank Rubio said during an interview with the Univision News program Al Punto.
NASA also reported that for this next trip to the Moon it will have, for the first time, a woman who will stand out by 2024.