'An honour to be chosen': Italian astronaut on piloting Nasa lunar mission
Nasa's Artemis III mission follows the successful Artemis II flight completed in April – the farthest humans have travelled from the Earth.
The crew will undertake a series of challenging tests in Low Earth Orbit in 2027, in preparation for Artemis IV, the first planned crewed mission to the lunar South Pole, in 2028.
At the helm will be Italy's Luca Parmitano, heading up a four-member crew expected to remain in space for around two weeks.
Selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) as an astronaut in 2009, Parmitano has a master's degree in experimental flight test engineering from the Institut Supérieur de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace in Toulouse. He has logged more than 2,000 flight hours across 40 types of aircraft.
RFI: Nasa announced on 9 June that you will be part of the next Artemis mission in 2027 – the first European to participate in a mission of the American space agency's lunar programme. How does it feel to be selected for such an adventure?
Luca Parmitano: It's incredible. I'm truly honoured to have been chosen for this role and this pilot position. It was completely unexpected. I'm approaching this role with humility because I know it's a very complex mission. I have a lot to learn.
RFI: What do you think made Nasa choose you?
LP: I think they looked at the experience, the background, the rank of the test pilots, and I think they looked at my experience as an astronaut with two missions to the International Space Station, station controls, spacewalks... They looked at all of that. They also looked at the coordination between who was going to fly, with what experience. So I was there at the right time, where my experience had the characteristics they were looking for.
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RFI: You've already spent more than a year in space with two missions aboard the International Space Station – as a European on an American mission. Would you say international space cooperation still exists?
LP: I think this is a very good sign of international collaboration. In fact, I think it's a statement that Nasa believes everything we have to offer – our experience, our technology, our science, but also our personnel – is valuable, something that Nasa needs. And that's why I think it's a really good sign for now and for the future, because the Artemis project is very large, and so there are still many European contributions to this major exploration programme [to come].
RFI: So you'll be the first European on this Artemis programme, but perhaps not the last?
LP: I'm sure I won't be the last. I'm the first for this mission. But afterwards, the goal is to broaden our contribution in order to have boots on the moon.
RFI: There will be four of you on the mission, and you will be testing two lunar modules. What sort of activities will you be doing?
LP: With our crew, we're going to create the procedures for the in-orbit connection between the Orion space shuttle and the Human Landing System, the shuttles that will take the astronauts to the lunar surface until that point. We don't have anything like this yet. This procedure doesn't exist. We have to develop it. Our mission is to do it twice.
You might think it's simple because we're not going to the Moon, but in fact that's why it's much more complex, because the spacecraft is a Deep Space Shuttle. It was designed to work in space around the Moon, so working with it around Earth is much more difficult. And on top of that, we'll be working with two shuttles that have never flown. So it's really an experimental, testing mission, and that's why I'm so busy as a test pilot.
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RFI: Do you think about the risks when you embark on this kind of mission?
LP: It's clear there will be risks. That's why we're going to do them in an environment we can control more easily. Because if there are major problems, we can quickly get back on the field. But risks are a bit like the salt of life. If there's no salt, life has no flavour. If there's too much, you can't enjoy it. You need the right level of risk to appreciate life.
RFI: During your first trip to the ISS, you had a problem during a spacewalk that could have been fatal when water got into your helmet and you nearly drowned...
LP: It was an experience that showed us that space flight is never what you expect. There will always be situations we haven't experienced. And you have to be prepared for them. [But] even when you're not prepared, it's clear that the training you receive is enough to give you the ability to cope, even when you don't have a procedure to follow.
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RFI: The Artemis mission is at the end of 2027, almost a year and a half away. What will you be doing between now and then?
LP: We've started with training on the Orion shuttle. It's a shuttle that I don't know at all. I need to know it like my own car, or even better, within a few months, because the team will be working with this shuttle, along with other shuttles we don't know at all. So the Orion system needs to become my area of expertise, something I know very well, including the procedures and systems. So I have a lot of work to do.
This interview has been adapted from the original version in French by Arnaud Pontus and lightly edited for clarity.