PASADENA, California – NASA and the European Space Agency announced agreements to cooperate on Earth sciences and a lunar mission on June 15, but agency officials said they are still discussing more substantial cooperation in the Artemis program and the exploration of Mars.
Following a meeting of the ESA Council in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, NASA and ESA announced two new cooperation agreements. One, called the Framework Agreement for a Strategic Partnership in Earth System Science, describes cooperation between agencies on issues that include continuity of action and data exchange. It is based on a joint statement of intent that the agencies signed in July 2021.
The other agreement is a memorandum of understanding regarding Lunar Pathfinder, a lunar communications commercial vessel developed by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. with ESA as an anchor client. It is expected to be ready for launch in late 2024 or early 2025. NASA will arrange for the launch of Lunar Pathfinder through its commercial lunar payload service program and gain access to communications services from the spacecraft. ESA and NASA will also be collaborating on a spacecraft navigation experiment.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson signed the agreements with his ESA counterpart, Director General Josef Aschbacher, at the ESA Board meeting. The agencies said it was the first time a NASA administrator had attended a meeting of the board, ESA’s governing body.
In a media briefing after the board meeting, Aschbacher and Nelson talked more about greater cooperation between agencies, such as the roles NASA could play in helping ESA respond to the impacts of sanctions the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. This includes the ExoMars rover mission, which was launched in September but is now being postponed indefinitely after ESA broke off cooperation with Roscosmos.
“Since February 24, we have to say that this partnership has intensified,” Aschbacher said of ESA’s relationship with NASA. “In space, the hand that came to us from NASA was very welcome and much appreciated.”
He said, however, that ESA is still evaluating options for continuing ExoMars, including those involving NASA assistance. Aschbacher and other ESA officials have said they can look to NASA for new ExoMars landing gear engines, radioisotope heating units to keep the rover warm at night and perhaps a mission launch.
Aschbacher said NASA “offered to help conduct studies” for ExoMars, including a “very strong” letter of support from Nelson, but that ESA had yet to decide how to proceed with the mission. He said there are no plans to combine ExoMars with NASA’s Mars Sample Return campaign and ESA to return to Earth samples stored in the cache by the Perseverance rover.
“There is still a lot of intense discussion going on,” he said. “It’s on the right track and I’m pretty sure we’ll find a good partnership with ExoMars. Of course, the final decision on our part is up to our member states.”
“This is being discussed and is being considered,” Nelson said of a NASA role in ExoMars. “That’s what we’re willing to say today. We want to help ESA given the circumstances.”
Another issue is the cooperation between ESA and NASA in the Artemis initiative of human lunar exploration. ESA is providing elements such as the service module for the Orion spacecraft and, with the Japanese space agency JAXA, modules for the lunar walkway.
These contributions are expected by European astronauts to be assigned to Artemis missions, including landing on the moon. No ESA astronauts have yet been announced for the Artemis missions.
Nelson said there is no firm timetable for selecting ESA astronauts for Artemis missions, but that an ESA astronaut will be included in an Artemis landing some time after Artemis 3, currently scheduled for 2025. “Crew composition is after that. be resolved and negotiated,” he said. “We look forward to having an ESA astronaut with us on the moon in the future.”
NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy, who also attended the meeting, suggested that an ESA astronaut could be assigned to Artemis 4, a mission that is currently not planned to land on the moon but to install lar European and Japanese components for the lunar front door. “We absolutely intend for an ESA astronaut to support these missions on Gateway,” he said.
“It’s all in the hands of NASA,” Aschbacher said of bringing an ESA astronaut to the lunar surface. “Sure, I wish it was before the end of this decade, but that’s my wish, which is well known to Bill.”