Nasa has dropped its longstanding public commitment to land the first woman and person of color on the moon, in response to Donald Trump’s directives to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices at federal agencies.
The promise was a central plank of the space agency’s Artemis program, which is scheduled to return humans to the lunar surface in 2027 for the first time since the final Apollo mission in December 1972.
The Artemis landing page of Nasa’s website previously included the words: “Nasa will land the first woman, first person of color, and first international partner astronaut on the Moon using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before.”
The version of the page live on the website on Friday, however, appears with the phrase removed.
The development was reported by the Orlando Sentinel.
Nasa spokesperson Allard Beutel said in a statement emailed to the Guardian: “In keeping with the president’s executive order, we’re updating our language regarding plans to send crew to the lunar surface as part of Nasa’s Artemis campaign. We look forward to learning more from [and] about the Trump administration’s plans for our agency and expanding exploration at the moon and Mars for the benefit of all.”
Nasa’s action is in keeping with compliance by numerous other federal agencies that followed orders to remove mentions of DEI programs and initiatives following Trump’s second-term inauguration on 20 January.
Agencies including the Internal Revenue Service and National Institutes of Health took swift action to eliminate policies and funding associated with DEI, while the US military followed a presidential order to implement a ban on transgender people from service, a measure temporarily blocked by a federal judge on Wednesday.
The move by Nasa is particularly notable because the creation of the Artemis program, and decision to land the first woman and person of color on the moon, were made in 2019 during the first Trump administration, according to the science journal Ars Technica.
The agency has made strides in recent years to embrace diversity and move away from its reputation as being staffed by old, white men. All 12 people who walked on the moon during six Apollo missions between 1969 and 1972 were white men aged between 36 and 47.
The first spaceflight by a US woman did not take place until 1983, when Sally Ride flew on the space shuttle Challenger. Nasa’s first Black astronaut in space was Guion Bluford, who flew a mission on Challenger later the same year.
Artemis III is scheduled to land on the lunar surface in mid-2027, with its crew yet to be announced. A paragraph on the Artemis website that preceded the removed section about a woman and person of color continues to state that: “We are exploring the moon for scientific discovery, technology advancement, and to learn how to live and work on another world as we prepare for human missions to Mars.
“We will collaborate with commercial and international partners and establish the first long-term presence on the Moon.”
A first, un-crewed test mission, Artemis I, flew around the moon in November 2022.
Artemis II, which will take humans to the moon and back without landing, is scheduled for April 2026. Its crew of four, three of whom have flown into space before, includes one female astronaut, Christina Koch, and an African American, Victor Glover.
The other crew members are US astronaut Reid Wiseman, the mission commander, and Canadian Jeremy Hansen on his first spaceflight.
