As America charts a path for humanity to take its first steps on the moon since 1972, Emmanuel Macron just wants to make sure the first European to go is French.
“I have a candidate for you to fly to the moon,” the French president told US Vice President Kamala Harris when they met at NASA headquarters on Wednesday, according to a published video on social networks.
The candidate at his side was Thomas Pesquet, a 44-year-old Frenchman first selected as an astronaut for the European Space Agency in 2009, who has since visited the International Space Station twice.
The US government aims to return humans to the surface of the moon around 2025 as part of the third stage of its Artemis program. The first mission, the unmanned Artemis 1, is set to crash in the Pacific Ocean on December 11, with Artemis 2 scheduled to make the same trip around the moon but with humans on board.
The third Artemis mission, which will not take place until 2025 at the earliest, will then aim to return humans to the lunar surface.
“He wants to go to Artemis 3,” Macron said of Pesquet in the video posted to his personal Twitter account, featuring his compatriot as a willing candidate.
ESA already provides propulsion modules for Artemis missions, which allow NASA’s Orion rocket to maneuver into orbit. As part of a barter agreement, these technology deliveries then secure the seats of the Paris-based ESA on manned space missions.
However, the permanent agreement was not to include a place on Artemis 3 and, regardless, ESA management, not national leaders, usually decides which serving astronauts are offered for international missions.
The agency has so far not publicly selected who from its recently expanded core of astronauts would be selected for any future lunar missions. However, Pesquet is keen to fly and has previously told POLITICO he would like to see Europe embark on its own human spaceflight programme.
In the video, the French space explorer is full of praise for the “magical” launch of Artemis 1 this month from Kennedy Space Center.
“It would be fun,” Pesquet told Harris, who chairs the National Space Council, of the chance to pilot Artemis 3.
