Vanessa Wyche, director of NASA's Johnson Space Center, spoke at the Space House event on March 21, 2026, describing Artemis as a program to build systems, partnerships, and a workforce for deeper space exploration. S. at the forefront of innovation.
Future Artemis missions will increase launch cadence, expand robotic exploration, and lay groundwork for a sustained human presence on the Moon. The Moon will serve as a testing ground to build a lunar base for future deep space exploration, a key step toward enabling missions to Mars. The International Space Station has operated for 25 years as a proving ground for systems, operations, and crew performance critical for deep space missions.
This is now where we're all committed to do one thing together.
NASA is working with commercial companies to deliver cargo, transport crews, and develop future destinations in low Earth orbit. On public engagement, Johnson Lead Public Affairs Officer Nilufar Ramji spoke during the 'The Cosmos Has Entered the Chat' session at South by Southwest. According to Ramji, she leads efforts as co-executive producer for NASA's live broadcasts to connect global audiences with the agency's missions.
With the Artemis program, we've been able to keep going on what we call a Moon to Mars strategy. That's allowing us to develop the capabilities – some that we're testing on the International Space Station for Mars, some that we're testing for the Moon – but it will allow us to do that together.
The different sectors that intersect with space, the storytelling aspect, but more importantly doing it collaboratively, is so important to make space accessible for everybody. That's a really big part of NASA working with different organizations to do ju