Artemis Project Artemis Project The Artemis Project was a private spaceflight venture to establish a permanent, self-supporting base on the Moon by 2002. It was named after Artemis, the goddess of the Moon and twin sister of Apollo (a reference to the Apollo project). The project's creators, the Lunar Resources Company, formed the Artemis Society as a non-profit NGO in 1994. They planned to cover the costs by exploiting the entertainment value in creating a lunar colony. They also believed that their costs would be a small fraction of what a government agency, such as NASA, would have spent. The project studied
Artemis worshipped as a fertility/childbirth goddess in some places, assimilating Ilithyia, since, according to some myths, she assisted her mother in the delivery of her twin. During the Classical period in Athens, she was identified with Hecate. Artemis also assimilated Caryatis (Carya). As Aeginaea, she was worshipped in Sparta; the name means either huntress of chamois, or the wielder of the javelin (). Also in Sparta, Artemis "Lygodesma" was worshipped. This epithet means "willow-bound" from the Gr. "lygos" (λυγός, willow) and "desmos" (δεσμός, bond). The willow tree appears in several ancient Greek myths and rituals. She was worshipped at Naupactus as