NASA will ask Congress for an extra $1.6 billion to begin preparations to land the first woman on the moon by 2024, the space agency said late Monday.

President Donald Trump tweeted the call for extra cash for the $21 billion space agency ahead of NASA's announcement. The administration will add the new figures to its earlier request for NASA's 2020 budget.



"This gets us out of the gate with a strong start," Jim Bridenstine, administrator of NASA, said in a news briefing on the proposal. "All of us at NASA should be excited."

The 2024 two-person landing would include the first woman astronaut to walk on the moon, he added, and be called the Artemis missions. NASA last landed astronauts on the moon in 1972's Apollo 17 mission. In Greek mythology, the goddess Artemis was the sister of Apollo; to honor the first women landing on the moon, Bridenstine said, the moon landings would be named after that figure.