ESA astronaut assignment on Artemis 3 part of negotiations on revised Artemis roles
The assignment of a European Space Agency astronaut to the Artemis 3 mission is part of negotiations ESA is undertaking for revised roles in the overall effort, with a goal of getting European astronauts on the lunar surface.
At a June 9 event in Houston, NASA announced the crew of the Artemis 3 mission, a mid-2027 test flight in low Earth orbit in which the Orion spacecraft will attempt to dock with lunar lander prototypes built by Blue Origin and SpaceX. That crew includes ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano as pilot.
ESA had earlier secured three seats on Artemis missions to the lunar Gateway through its planned contributions to the program. At the ESA ministerial conference last November, ESA announced those seats would go to astronauts from France, Germany and Italy, with Germany getting the first flight.
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However, NASA's announcement at the Ignition event in March that it would no longer pursue development of the Gateway upended those plans, including what ESA might instead provide for NASA's new lunar base initiative.
ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher said during a June 11 press conference at the ILA Berlin Air Show that the assignment of Parmitano, an Italian, to Artemis 3 was part of ongoing negotiations with NASA.
"I cannot preempt any of the discussions, negotiations that are ongoing, but what I can say is that the announcement this week of Luca Parmitano being part of Artemis 3 is part of the negotiation process as the first step," he said.
He did not discuss details of those discussions but suggested that the addition of Parmitano to Artemis 3 came relatively recently. "This was not clear at all just a couple of weeks ago," he said, thanking NASA for the opportunity to fly an ESA astronaut on the mission.
With the Gateway shelved indefinitely, Aschbacher said ESA is in talks with NASA, as well as among its member states, on how to participate in the new lunar base effort. The goal, he said, is to find contributions that would result in ESA astronauts going on future lunar landing missions.
"The next obviously interesting flights would be to the lunar surface, and this is exactly what we are negotiating with NASA right now, that we can obtain flights to the lunar surface," Aschbacher said.
ESA had previously discussed offering lunar cargo services with Argonaut, a lander the agency is developing that can carry about 1.5 tons of cargo, in exchange for seats on Artemis landing missions.
Aschbacher said ESA could also contribute services from Moonlight, a communications and navigation satellite system in lunar orbit, as well as rovers, surface robotic systems and potentially returning cargo from the moon. "There may be other possibilities," he added.
He said there are discussions with both NASA and ESA's member states, including a meeting of the ESA Council next week. Other milestones include the International Space Summit, an event organized by the French government in Paris in September, and an ESA interministerial conference in December.
"We are just at the beginning of these negotiations, but I certainly hope that we get clarity before the end of this year," he said.
Part of those discussions might include the delivery of additional Orion service modules. ESA has an agreement to provide six of the service modules, covering missions through Artemis 5 along with a flight spare.
NASA has discussed moving to a more commercial model for lunar transportation for missions beyond Artemis 5, which could include the prime contractors for Orion and the Space Launch System providing their vehicles as a service rather than delivering them as hardware to NASA. That would affect the current model for the Orion service module, which ESA provides to NASA through a barter agreement.
Aschbacher said that NASA has talked about procuring additional Orion service modules. "Orion is really the safe way of bringing astronauts to the moon, and NASA has been in that discussion with us, asking for more service modules," he said. "We are right now discussing with industry, and obviously also with NASA, to have future service modules seven and eight that are to be planned as well."
"ESA is very proud and very happy to be a partner of NASA to support NASA in this undertaking," he said of Artemis, while steering clear of talk of a race between the United States and China over who will next land humans on the moon.
"We're not having an ambition as ESA to be part of this race, as you know, but we are participating with NASA on this ambition to go back to the moon," he said, calling ESA's role in Artemis "the tip of the iceberg" in Europe's broader space efforts.
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