1st European to fly to the moon will be German

BREMEN, Germany — A German astronaut will be the first European to fly to the moon with a future NASA-led Artemis mission, the European Space Agency's (ESA) Director General Josef Aschbacher said at the ESA Ministerial Council, a high-level conference deciding the agency's budget and future direction, on Thursday, Nov. 27 in Bremen, Germany.

Germany is ESA's biggest budget contributor. An Airbus factory in Bremen assembles the European Service Module, which provides propulsion, power and atmosphere regeneration for the Orion space capsule designed to house astronauts during Artemis moon trips. Europe also builds components for the Lunar Gateway, a space station intended to orbit the Moon from 2027. Elements of the Lunar Gateway are being built by consortia led by France and Italy, whose nationals will be on subsequent Artemis flights, Aschbacher said at the conference. It is in exchange for these contributions that ESA secured three seats on the moon-bound trips. "An ESA astronaut traveling beyond [low Earth orbit] for the first time will be a huge inspiration and source of pride for their country and for Europe at large," Aschbacher said at the conference.

Germany currently has two experienced astronauts among the ESA astronaut corps — 55-year old Matthias Maurer and 49-year-old Alexander Gerst. Both have spent months at the International Space Station. Germany also has two astronauts in ESA's reserve team: 36-year-old Amelie Schoenenwald and 40-year-old Nicola Winter. Neither of them, however, has flown to space yet. Gerst and Maurer are therefore the most likely contenders for that coveted Artemis 4 seat.

Gerst's first six-month stint on the ISS took place in 2014, during which he performed a six-hour spacewalk, installing new equipment outside the space station. He returned to the orbital outpost in 2018 when he also served as a commander. With 362 days in space, he is among ESA's most experienced astronauts. His colleague Maurer has completed one mission, having spent 176 days at the space station in 2021. He also performed a space walk during that time.

ESA, a cooperation between 23 European countries, is part of the International Space Station partnership and regularly has its astronauts among the ISS crew. In the 1990s, several European astronauts participated in repair missions to the Hubble Space Telescope, which orbits some 340 miles (540 kilometers) away from Earth, about 90 miles (140 km) farther than the space station. No European, however, has ever ventured deeper into space.

"We can now, for the very first time, send a European astronaut flying 360,000 kilometers away," Dorothee Bär, Germany's Federal Minister of Research, Technology and Space, said at the press conference. "This means that a European astronaut will be traveling for approximately three days until for the first time he sees the Earth as a whole. No European has ever seen that before."

NASA has so far announced the crew for the upcoming Artemis 2 mission, which will return humans to the moon's orbit next year. Three NASA astronauts — Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch — will take the journey together with Canadian spaceman Jeremy Hansen. In 2027, the subsequent Artemis 3 mission will attempt to place humans onto the moon's surface for the first time since the end of the Apollo program in 1972. The crew for that mission has not yet been named but it is unlikely to include a European as Aschbacher said earlier that ESA had secured seats on Artemis missions 4 and 5. Artemis 4 is currently planned for the second half of 2028, while Artemis 5 mission is expected to take place in 2030.

While a German astronaut will be the first European to orbit the moon, the first European footprints on the moon's surface will probably belong to a Frenchman or an Italian. France's Thomas Pesquet (47) is likely one of the front-runners for that honor. A member of two seven-month missions to the International Space Station in 2016/2017 and in 2021, he has 397 space days under his belt. He performed several space walks during those missions and also briefly served as an ISS commander.

French helicopter pilot Sophie Adenot was selected as an ESA astronaut in 2022 and will be the first of the new astronaut cohort to fly to the ISS for an eight-month mission early next year. That flight will allow her to gain precious experience, which might qualify her for a future Artemis moon trip. (Reserve astronauts Marcus Wandt, of Sweden, and Poland's Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski, flew to the ISS for two-week stints with Axiom paid for by their respective countries in 2024 and 2025 respectively.)

Among the Italians, the most likely contenders for an Artemis seat and a possible place in a lunar lander are 49-year-old Luca Parmitano and 48-year-old Samantha Cristoforetti, both of whom participated in two long-duration missions to the International Space Station. Parmitano performed multiple space walks during his time in space, including one that nearly killed him when his helmet filled with water because of a clogged filter.

Artemis 6 is foreseen to launch no earlier than 2031. Beyond that, the fate of the Artemis program is uncertain as the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump intends to discontinue the Space Launch System and Orion programs — the rocket and capsule used to conduct the Artemis missions — and replace them with commercially built spaceships. ESA has agreements with NASA in place to produce Orion Service Modules for six Artemis missions.

"Beyond European Service Module number six, we want to keep the options open," Daniel Neuenschwander, ESA's Director for Human and Robotic Exploration told Space.com. "It's possible that the U.S partner will come to us and look for the continuation of the Orion — European Service Module couple."

Europe is also working on a lunar lander for cargo delivery called Argonaut, so hopes to have something up its sleeve to pay for possible future moon trips.