“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
