Germany’s Astronaut Set to Fly to the Moon with NASA

At upcoming lunar missions organized by the U.S. space agency NASA, a German astronaut will be on board. “I have decided that the first Europeans to fly on a lunar mission will be ESA astronauts of German, French and Italian nationality,” ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher said on Thursday at the European Space Agency’s ministerial meeting in Bremen. He confirmed that a German astronaut will go first.

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Aschbacher and German Federal Research Minister Dorothee Bär (CSU) did not initially specify names. “After more than 50 years, it is truly time for us to approach the Moon again,” Bär said in Bremen. “And it is wonderful that now finally a European, and above all a German, will be part of it.”

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Among the possible candidates are astronauts Alexander Gerst and Matthias Maurer, both of whom have already completed missions aboard the International Space Station (ISS). In Bremen on Wednesday, Bär also appeared alongside German reserve astronaut Amelie Schoenenwald.

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The United States aims to carry out its first crewed lunar mission in more than 50 years by 2029. The U.S. previously landed on the Moon six times with its Apollo missions between 1969 and 1972. The first preparatory mission of the new lunar program Artemis took place at the end of 2022 after several delays, with the uncrewed Orion spacecraft orbiting the Moon as part of Artemis 1.

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The first crewed mission, Artemis 2, is set to send a four-person team on a lunar flyby. Artemis 3 is intended to return humans to the lunar surface. This mission had most recently been planned for 2027. After several setbacks at the space company SpaceX, owned by tech billionaire Elon Musk, NASA decided in October to reopen the Artemis contracts for bidding.

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During its ministerial conference in Bremen, ESA member states also approved the agency’s budget for the next three years. Germany will contribute a record sum of 5.4 billion euros from the federal budget, Bär announced, marking an increase of roughly 30 percent. Altogether, ESA received commitments totaling about 22.1 billion euros, according to Aschbacher, more than five billion euros above the 16.9 billion euros secured in 2022 at the previous ministerial meeting in Paris.

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