“We as Europeans, we as Italians, we want to be strong partners of the United States in this race,” astronaut Luca Parmitano told Euronews, talking about the current frontier in space exploration: returning to the Moon.
Parmitano, an Italian astronaut from the European Space Agency (ESA), was selected by NASA to take part in the Artemis III mission, designed to be a test mission for NASA’s Moon landing programme.
Set to launch in 2027, Artemis III will send three NASA astronauts and Parmitano to low-Earth orbit on the Orion spacecraft to dock with two lunar landers produced respectively by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin.
NASA has presented the mission as one of the most complex human spaceflights in recent history. As Parmitano prepares for it, he joined Euronews interview programme 12 Minutes With to share how he is getting on, the challenges ahead, and the current state of the space race.
Bringing the European identity into orbit
“The mission was not at all on my horizon,” said Parmitano, “I was speechless, which is quite unusual for me, and I was really grateful.”
Parmitano was the first Italian commander on the International Space Station and spent over 366 days in space across two long-duration missions: Volare (2013) and Beyond (2019-2020). He was the first Italian to perform a space walk and now he will be the first European to go into orbit with the Artemis programme.
NASA publicly presented the crew for the Artemis III mission on June 9 at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. At the event, Parmitano gave an emotional speech, calling Italy his own “launch pad” and the ESA his “launch tower”.
Parmitano told Euronews he is grateful to the Italian public education system and aims to bring into orbit the spirit of determination — a characteristic of European identity for him.
“People of my age, we were not born Europeans. We became Europeans. This identity was desired, this identity has been a goal, something we wanted to achieve,” he said.
Artemis III: a complex mission toward the Moon
Despite the excitement, Parmitano is aware of the challenges posed by Artemis III. “We have three launches that have to happen in close proximity and from very different spacecrafts,” he explained.
Multiple factors will contribute to the success of the Artemis III mission, including the readiness and successful launches of the lunar landers and NASA’s Orion spacecraft as well as the critical orbital manoeuvers.
Astronauts will also have to live in the Orion spacecraft, with a habitable volume of just 8 to 9 cubic metres. It is built for deep space conditions, which are different to those at low-Earth orbit where the mission will be conducted.
To prepare for such a complex journey, Parmitano and his three NASA crew members, Randy Bresnik, Frank Rubio and Andre Douglas, are now following an intense training schedule.
The programme involves practicing crucial skills, conducting simulations, and preparing for potential malfunction scenarios. “Our training is very complex and wonderfully different and varied,” Parmitano stated.
The state of the space race
If lately on Earth, relations between the EU and the US have been tense, in space, Parmitano claims, this is not the case. “We don’t look at what’s happening at the political level; we are operators.”
Parmitano said the Artemis III mission is part of the space race to return to the Moon and underlined that the EU-US relationship in orbit remains strong. “We all feel a common goal, which is that of the betterment of humankind on Earth, our life, and this is the next step.”
The ESA has been playing an important role in the Artemis mission architecture. For example, it built the European Service Module to provide electricity, thermal control, oxygen, nitrogen, and water to the Orion spacecraft.
However, ESA’s contribution to the programme was altered following NASA’s decision earlier this year to pause work on the Lunar Gateway, a Moon-orbiting space station for which Europe had been building some key modules.
On the 2027 deadline, presented by many experts as far too ambitious, Parmitano argued that “to achieve complex objectives, you have to be ambitious and push hard”.