TL;DRGermany’s space minister tells Washington that US lunar missions depend on European-built hardware, citing the Orion spacecraft’s European Service Module assembled in Bremen. The remarks come as a transatlantic tech standoff escalates over AI export controls and EU sovereignty measures.
Germany’s space minister has a message for Washington: the dependence runs both ways. In an interview with Politico at the VivaTech trade show in Paris this week, Dorothee Bär said Europe provides “critical key technologies” for American space missions, adding bluntly: “Without us, it cannot be done.”
The claim is not bluster. NASA describes the European Service Module as the Orion spacecraft’s “powerhouse,” supplying electricity, propulsion, thermal control, air, and water for the capsule that carried astronauts around the moon during the Artemis II mission earlier this year.
Built in Bremen, flown to the moon
The European Service Module is assembled by Airbus in the northwestern German city of Bremen under a European Space Agency contract, with components from 13 ESA member states and more than 100 suppliers. “Without the European Service Module, the United States would not be able to fly to the moon,” Bär told Politico.
