Artemis Westenberg is the director and owner of SpaceWorks. Artemis has 35 years of experience as an influential lobbyist and advocate among variety of circles, organizations and causes in the Netherlands, Europe and North America. She has been a lobbyist in the space exploration sector since 2000.

Over the years, she has become an expert on the geology of Mars and NASA’s Mars Science Laboratories, Curiosity and its predecessors Spirit & Opportunity. Westenberg is a well-known Mars and space ambassador, often as a Netherlands spokesperson among the national and international space community.

She served as president of the Mars Society Netherlands and as a Steering Committee member for the Mars Society Inc.  She also served as Capsule Communicator and crewmember in a number of Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) missions. In 2007, she was logistics manager for the Flashline Arctic Research Station (FMARS) crew. Westenberg took on management of MDRS in 2008 as Mission Director where she turned the project into a completely self-sufficient and financially independent venture. She has coordinated both national and international conferences since 1980, many taking place in the Netherlands and Europe.

Since early in her career, she has been a nationally decorated feminist in her country, which began when she was delegated as a member of the Dutch government to attend the UN conference on the status of women, in Copenhagen 1980. Westenberg gained knowledge in public affairs and business administration while working for Honeywell, Inc. and THORN EMI  and later as president of the Council of Women for Rotterdam.

One of her current missions is to further establish a European Mars analogue station. Westenberg is multilingual, speaking Dutch, English and Spanish regularly, with fluency in six others languages.

She received a M.A. in Ancient History and Islam, with minors in International Relations and Classical Studies from Leiden University, as well as a degree in General Management from the Dutch Entrepreneurial Society.