Telset.id, Jakarta – The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced a team of seven astronauts to practice NASA’s Artemis II mission to the moon.
Of the seven ESA astronauts on the Artemis II mission, only one will have the chance to be the first European to walk on the lunar surface.
The seven astronaut candidates are Thomas Pesquet from France, Tim Peake from England, Alexander Gerst and Matthias Maurer from Germany, Luca Parmitano and Samantha Cristoforetti from Italy and Andreas Mogensen from Denmark.
It has been recorded that the seven astronauts selected by ESA have completed at least one mission to the International Space Station (ISS).
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Between them, the team had the equivalent of 4.5 years in orbit and 98 hours of walking in space, ESA communications chief Philippe Willekens told reporters at the Paris International Astronautical Congress.
Willekens explained that three astronauts would be selected to go to the Lunar Gateway, the station that would orbit the Moon. However, only one person will set foot on the moon. ESA must decide which of the seven candidates to select.
“We are all candidates and the important thing is to go there as a team,” French astronaut Thomas Pesquet told reporters at an event in Paris. The phone quote from Gadget360Thursday (22/9/2022).
On this occasion Pesquet, Gerst, Maurer and Parmitano were present wearing dark blue polo shirts with the ESA and Artemis logos. “Look, we all wear the same clothes,” Pesquet added.
Meanwhile, Samantha Cristoforetti had to make a video call from space because she was on the ISS, having become the first European woman outside the station since July. Mogensen also spoke via video as she prepared her tour aboard the ISS.
The launch of the first Artemis mission, which was unmanned and aimed to test the new rocket system and the Orion capsule, was delayed several times due to technical problems. Finally, the launch was delayed due to a fuel leak.
NASA itself is aiming for September 27, 2022 as the launch date of the first Artemis mission. The next mission, Artemis II, will take astronauts to the moon without landing on the surface, then a third mission will be carried out in three years or in 2025.
“During this decade, three ESA astronauts will fly to the Lunar Gateway, our permanent station built around the moon,” David Parker, ESA’s director of human and robotic exploration, told AFP.
“And hopefully, by the end of this decade we will be ready to send the first European astronauts to the moon,” he added.
According to Pesquet, putting Europeans on the moon would be something that inspired Europe. It would also be a strong signal to say that “here we are, we are unfolding in the outside world, in a cooperative way”.
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“With a European on the moon, I hope a united Europe becomes the reality it is today,” said Maurer.
Despite deep divisions between Russia and the West over Moscow’s war in Ukraine, a US astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts took off for the ISS on a Russian-operated flight on Wednesday. [SN/HBS]
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