Artemis -2 was a 10-day moon mission from Wednesday, 1st April 2026, to Saturday, 11th April 2026, that took a nowhere road to reach everywhere! How many know what does the word ARTEMIS mean? Only fools feel proud of this achievement.
- Artemis is the Greek goddess of hunting, wild animals, chastity, and childbirth. She is also associated with the moon.
- In medicine, Artemis refers to a crucial protein involved in Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) repair.
- In the Bible, Artemis is a pagan goddess worshipped as a goddess of fertility.
NASA’s Artemis is named after the Greek goddess of the moon. It represents an effort to return astronauts to the moon. Artemis-2 includes the first woman and the first colored person in its crew. Now, we can safely say as many poets romantically described that “her face is as beautiful as the moon,” and also that “she has returned from the moon”!
After spending billions of dollars, what did Artemis-2 achieve? The main objective was data collection—to assess the performance of the Orion spacecraft and its life support systems in deep space with humans onboard. By the way, what is the meaning of Orion? In Greek mythology, Orion was a great hunter whom Artemis placed among the stars as a constellation. Orion is a prominent constellation seen during winter in the Northern Hemisphere.
Artemis-2 broke the record of Apollo 13 (1970). The Orion spacecraft traveled 406,764 km one way; for the round trip, it covered 11, 17,684 km – start to finish.
I wonder why National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which believes in science, always names its spacecraft and rockets after the Greek gods? I guess, science is the biggest superstition of NASA.
Dr. K. Raja Gopal Reddy is a seasoned internationally qualified Insurance professional. What you are reading here, may not answer all the questions we have, but has the absolute power of asking unsettling questions which increase the interest in the strange world, and show the contradictory wonders lying just below the surface of the commonest things of life. Look at this disturbing but beautiful thought of Friedrich Nietzsche “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him”. Dr. Reddy can be reached at: raja66gopal@gmail.com
