Why do Europeans want to return to the moon? This time, "we are going to stay there"

INTERVIEW

Hand in hand with the Americans, the Europeans are working to bring Man back to the Moon.

On Wednesday, the European Space Agency announced the awarding of contracts to manufacturers, including Airbus and Thales Alenia Space, to participate in particular in the American Artemis program, which plans to send astronauts to the Earth satellite in 2024. " Thanks to Artemis, we will stay on the Moon as today we stay in the International Space Station, explains Jean-Yves Le Gall, president of the National Center for Space Studies (Cnes), on Friday on Europe 1.

>> Find Europe Matin in replay and podcast here

"We will permanently have two, three, even four people on the moon"

"From 2028-2030, it's tomorrow for us, we will permanently have two, three, even four people on the Moon, with rotations, as we have today in the (International Space) Station. rotations, there will of course be Europeans and French ", he continues.

The Artemis project also includes the upcoming launch of a space station orbiting the Moon and which will serve, for at least 15 years, as a stopover point for astronauts on their way to this star.

More than 50 years after Man's first step on the Moon in 1969, the head of CNES compares this new stage to that represented by the opening of the International Space Station for the conquest of space.

"There were the first manned flights, with the Gagarin flight in 1961 which had spent a few tens of minutes in space, and the continuation of the Gagarin flight, it is the International Space Station, where there is today "There are always three to six astronauts who are in orbit. For the Moon, it's going to be the same. Armstrong is the equivalent of Gagarin… We were on the Moon for a few dozen hours."

Now it's time for the lunar stay, then.

"Make a sort of base for the next mission, to Mars"

To do what?

"We are going to learn to study the lunar soil, because we haven't done much ... We will in particular look to see if we can find water", answers Jean-Yves Le Gall.

But another objective, more distant, is also in the minds of the project leaders.

For Jean-Yves Le Gall, it is a question of seeing "if from there we can make fuels for rockets, habitat, and make a kind of starting point for the next mission, which will be the mission to Mars ".

"But already, you have to go through this stage of living on the Moon," he tempers.

Pesquet "qualified" for a future lunar mission, according to Le Gall

Having left Kazakhstan in 2016 for a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and returned in June 2017, does French astronaut Thomas Pesquet have a chance to walk on the moon?

"Of course", replies the president of the National Center for Space Studies Jean-Yves Le Gall, Friday on Europe 1. "We are right to believe it", he said.

"Since (his flight aboard the ISS), at the top of my objectives, there was to make Thomas fly again and that's what we did. He will fly again, leave this time not from Kazakhstan but from Florida, in March-April, to spend six months aboard the Station, so a second six-month stay aboard the Station. He will most likely have expanded responsibilities and I would say that qualifies him for a possible mission. lunar in the period 2025-2030 ", affirms Jean-Yves Le Gall.