ESA lead astronaut – Europe on front seat to the Moon - video Dailymotion

The former head of the International Space Station looks forward to European astronauts heading to the Moon.

Transcript

00:00A small step for a DJ, but a great one for the world.

00:05Five years ago, thousands of people danced on a ship as Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano

00:09provided the music from space.

00:11Luca kept close contact with Euronews as he produced a series for us, regularly reporting

00:16on his activities in space.

00:20He completed two space missions and six spacewalks, spending a total of 366 days up there.

00:27Now he has come to see us in person and told us that he is preparing for his next challenge.

00:31He wants to reach the moon.

00:33And the first stop will be a space station orbiting the moon.

00:39We are looking forward to Artemis 2 mission, the first mission with a crew to the moon,

00:45around the moon I should say, because that will be the opening statement that will allow

00:52European astronauts to start thinking about flying towards the moon, first to the gateway

00:57and then one day also in the long term on the surface of the moon.

01:01So personally, as a 2009 class astronaut with two flights behind my back on the International

01:08Space Station, I'm really looking forward to a potential flight to the gateway.

01:13In recent decades, the space race has taken off.

01:15NASA is launching the Artemis 2 mission next year, and partnered by the ESA, it will include

01:20the first crewed mission of the Orion spacecraft.

01:23Meanwhile, China is working with Russia to build a moon base by 2027.

01:28According to the astronaut, the ambition of China and the United States to put a man on

01:32Mars is not yet realistic.

01:34When we talk about Mars, we have to understand that there may be a lot of boasting about

01:39planting the first human flag on the red planet, but it's a long ways, both from a physical

01:45point of view.

01:46Mars is 1,000 times further away than the moon.

01:50On average, it's 400 million kilometers.

01:52The moon is 400,000 kilometers, and it's still really hard to get to.

01:57He is convinced that Europe is far from being left behind in the space race, as the space

02:02station planned to orbit around the moon is being built almost entirely in Europe.