Fifty years after Apollo’s last flight, NASA scientists once again have their sights set on the Moon. The time has come for Artemis, the most powerful rocket in the world, to make its maiden flight Monday, August 29, from Cape Canaveral, Florida. A 42-day test trip, without a crew, but which American scientists have been preparing for more than a decade. With the hope, within a few years, of treading the surface of the Moon again. Among the potential candidates for such a trip: the French astronaut Thomas Pesquet, who does not hide his fascination for the Moon.
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franceinfo: Why is the Moon so special when you are an astronaut?
Thomas Pésquet: It is the most distant destination. You still have to remember that the international station is 400 kilometers above sea level. The Moon is 384,000 kilometers away, almost a thousand times further. Everything is a thousand times more complicated, it’s really not something easy to get there. That’s why we took a while to be ready to go back. It’s a bit like the Grail. And tomorrow will be March.
It was Donald Trump who relaunched this space program, when China also embarked on the conquest of the Moon… Is it a simple chase between countries?
No, there is obviously a scientific interest. If we could go to Mars directly, I think we would. Because we know it and we don’t hide it: scientific interest is greater on Mars. It is a planet similar to Earth, thanks to which we can read questions that concern us: where does life come from? Could she disappear? Can we lose our atmosphere? All of this we can find out on Mars but we are currently not in a position to go there. In the same way that, before embarking on the crossing of the Atlantic, we first embark on the crossing of the English Channel, we must rehearse our scales on the Moon.
“Obviously there are science things to do on the Moon and there will be science feedback. But it’s also a big rehearsal, before going to Mars.”
Thomas Pesquet, astronautat franceinfo
Are you a candidate to board the next rocket?
From Artemis III, Europe will have a say thanks to our contribution to the Orion capsule. We will then have flights for European astronauts. Clearly, my colleagues and I will be watching this very carefully. We will imagine ourselves in this capsule, setting sail for the most distant lands to which humanity has never ventured. We have two missions behind us that went well, that ticked all the boxes. I’m not the only one, we are a few to apply for missions to the Moon. The good thing is that there will be several missions, with a long-term program that will seek to use the resources on the Moon. This means that there will be several European astronauts who will set foot on the lunar surface in the next decades.