Who wants to go to the moon? Europe names astronaut candidates
The European Space Agency announced on Wednesday a team of seven astronauts training on the Moon for NASA’s Artemis mission, but only one will have the chance to become the first European to walk on the lunar surface.
The candidates Frenchman Thomas Pesquet, Briton Tim Peake, Germans Alexander Gerst and Mathias Maurer, Italians Luca Parmitano and Samantha Cristoforetti, and Dane Andreas Mogensen have completed at least one mission to the International Space Station.
Between them, the team has the equivalent of 4.5 years in orbit and 98 hours in space, ESA communications chief Philippe Villenes told reporters at the International Astronaut Congress in Paris.
Three astronauts will be selected to visit the Lunar Gateway, a planned station that will orbit the Moon.
But by the end of the decade, only one will walk on the moon. At some point, ESA will have to decide which of the seven candidates it will have to leave.”We are all candidates and it is important to get there as a team,” Pesquet told reporters at an event in Paris.
“Look, we’re all wearing the same shirt,” he said. Pesquet, Barley, Maurer and Parmitano all competed in a navy blue polo shirt with the ESA and Artemis logos.
Cristoforetti had to make video calls from space, where she has been aboard the ISS since she was the first European woman to start a spacewalk outside the station in July. Mogensen also spoke on video while preparing for his own tour aboard the ISS.
“Something inspiring for Europe”
The launch of the first unmanned Artemis mission, aimed at testing a new rocket system and an Orion capsule, has been delayed several times due to technical malfunctions, including a fuel leak. NASA is now targeting the September 27 launch.
The next mission, Artemis 2, will take astronauts to the moon without landing on its surface, while the third – due to launch in 2025 – will put humans on the moon for the first time since 1972. ESA deploys the European Service Module on the Orion capsule. “During this decade, three ESA astronauts will fly to the Lunar Gateway, our permanent station that we are building around the moon,” David Parker, ESA’s director of human and robotic exploration, told AFP.
“And hopefully, we will be ready to send the first European astronaut to the moon by the end of this decade,” he said.
“If Europe put a European on the moon, it would be inspiring, a strong signal to say ‘here we take our place in the world of space, in a cooperative way,'” Pesquet said.
Who wants to go to the moon? Europe names astronaut candidates
“With a European on the moon, I expect a united Europe to become the reality it is today,” said Maurer. An American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts flew to the ISS on Wednesday on a Russian-propelled flight, despite deep divisions between Russia and the West over Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
