Federal agencies are among the nation’s largest facility owners and builders. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, in the business of going where no one has gone before, faces challenges and must innovate every day—to explore the solar system and beyond and to build the infrastructure on earth to support its missions. Those missions range from providing launch support for commercial space ventures to landing on Mars, where the plucky rover Perseverance continues to explore.
But the series of missions currently capturing the imagination of the American public is Artemis—a program to explore more of the moon than ever before. In Greek mythology, Artemis was the twin sister of Apollo—the namesake for the mission that last put Americans on the moon 50 years ago. Notably, NASA’s Artemis program will land the first woman and the first person of color on the moon.