Dear Europe, the Moon is, first, of the Land of the Rising Sun

The first non-American on Selenian soil, under the Artemis programme, will be Japanese. Joe Biden announced this on 10 April, cementing an alliance that has lasted more than 70 years and has geopolitical as well as technological reasons. The agreement, signed on the same day as 70 military cooperation pacts, includes the delivery of a Made in Japan pressurised rover.

BY EMILIO COZZI

In Europe, the news came as a slap in the face: as part of the Artemis programme, the first non-American to leave a footprint in the lunar dust will be Japanese.
This was announced by US President Joe Biden during the visit of the Prime Minister of Japan, Fumio Kishida, to the White House on 10 April. It is the culmination of a collaboration between the two states, including in the space sector, which took shape with an agreement signed the day before by NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and Japan’s Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (Mext), Masahito Moriyama.
In the text of the agreement, the Japanese space agency, Jaxa, agrees to provide the Artemis programme with a pressurised rover for lunar exploration. In return, it obtains for the Land of the Rising Sun ‘two opportunities for astronauts to fly to the lunar surface’, one of which will allow a woman or a man to make history. The reasons relate to Japan’s commitment to space, although they are perhaps more geopolitical than technological.

Jaxa is to design the Lunar Cruiser, a vehicle that astronauts will drive to the Moon. Unlike the Lunar Terrain Rovers, the new ‘Moon buggy’ for which Nasa has issued a call for tenders to private individuals, the Japanese Lunar Cruisers will be enclosed and pressurised vehicles. It will therefore be possible to operate inside them without a suit and helmet.

The agreement does not specify dates; the timing of the flight opportunities, it says, will be ‘determined by Nasa in line with existing flight manifest and crew assignment processes and will take into account the progress and constraints of the programme, Mext’s request to assign Japanese astronauts to lunar surface missions as soon as possible, and major milestones of the PR – the pressurised rover – such as the timing of the first deployment of the PR on the lunar surface’. It will all be tied, it seems, to progress in the development of the rover, which is expected to be transported to the lunar surface in advance of Artemis 7, currently scheduled for no earlier than 2031.

It is likely, however, that by then the historic lunar landing of a Japanese astronaut will have taken place. As Space.com noted, in late 2023, US Vice President Kamala Harris told the National Space Council Meeting that an international astronaut will descend to the Moon by the end of the decade.

When, it is still difficult to say, since first some pieces of the Artemis mosaic must be put in place – and not a few – starting with Artemis 3, the programme’s third mission and the first to contemplate a human lunar landing. Currently scheduled for the end of 2026, it will require either the full operation of SpaceX’s Starship, or a Plan B, i.e. another lander.
It is already planned that the crew of Artemis 3 will consist entirely of US citizens, including the first woman to land on the Moon and the first non-white astronaut. The first valid hypothesis for a Japanese lunar landing would therefore be Artemis 4, as of today set for 2028 and with a crew that would also include a European astronaut. This had been revealed in July 2023 by Josef Aschbacher; on that occasion, the ESA Director General had also added that another European astronaut would be expected in Artemis 5.

Japan a strategic ally

As already written, the agreement hinges on the delivery of the Lunar Cruiser, a hydrogen cell-powered vehicle that Toyota has been working on for years. The agreement between the United States and Japan is the fruit of a collaboration that has lasted since 1951, when in exchange for full sovereignty Tokyo signed the ‘Security Treaty’ that binds the two states above all in an anti-communist, first, and anti-Chinese, key today.
Impossible not to put into context the fact that in Washington, on 10 April, seventy new defence cooperation pacts were also signed, in what the White House called “a new era of military collaboration”. For decades, Japan has been an American bridgehead in the Far East, strategically very relevant now that the balance of international politics is particularly unstable and Chinese military, technological and space competition is increasingly shaking the sleepers on the other side of the Pacific.

In space, in particular, the technological exchange has been significant: Jaxa has contributed to the International Space Station with the Kibō module, the largest experimental environment of the orbiting outpost, and two years ago guaranteed its contribution to the ISS programme until 2030. Japan was among the first countries to sign the Artemis agreements for the peaceful exploration of the Moon and inaugurated a collaboration to provide essential elements for the construction and operation of the Lunar Gateway, the lunar-orbiting station that NASA plans to make operational from 2028. There is also this behind the flag that Japan intends to plant, on another world, next to that of the United States.

Europe’s reasons

Many of the segments of the ISS and the Lunar Gateway itself are actually Made in Europe. Even the ‘Old Continent’, understood as ESA member states, has close collaborative relationships with Washington, both in the military field (they are almost all NATO members and the most important ones have signed the Artemis agreements) and in space. One only has to think of the Orion capsule’s service module, not by chance called the European Service Module, which will support the full operation of the vehicle and enable the survival of its occupants in transhipments to and from the Moon.

In addition to descending to the Silenian surface, the Artemis missions will contribute to the assembly of the Lunar Gateway, a NASA-led project in which Canada and the United Arab Emirates are collaborating in addition to ESA and Japan.
In 2028, Artemis 4 will begin by bringing the Lunar I-Hab (International Habitat) to rendezvous with the Power and Propulsion Element and the Habitation and Logistics Outpost, previously launched American modules. The Artemis 5 mission, in 2030, will instead deliver the Lunar View module. These are, these, elements built in Europe – with a strong Italian contribution – almost in their entirety and supplied by the European Space Agency. It is unlikely that these two missions will not include a European astronaut.
It cannot therefore be ruled out that in Paris, at ESA headquarters, the announcement of 10 April was greeted with some surprise and no less disappointment.
Italy, with Samantha Cristoforetti and Luca Parmitano, France, with Thomas Pesquet and the newly-selected Sophie Adenot, and Germany, with Alexander Gerst and Mathias Maurer, were the three countries that had the best chance of being the first non-American to see their own astronaut on the Moon. As a result of its contribution, Esa obtained three places on the first Artemis missions, two for the Gateway and one for the Moon landing; it remains to be seen when it will have the chance to see one or one of its own astronauts walk on the regolith. It is, in all evidence, also a question of prestige.

In light of what Biden revealed, one hypothesis would be to have mixed crews with two American and two international astronauts, or a change in their composition. There is no shortage of time to decide. And also the time to change the plans, which today envisage Artemis crews of four astronauts, two of whom are to descend to the Selenian surface and two of whom are to remain in orbit. Orion, the capsule to take off from Earth aboard the Space Launch System, has four seats. Starship, on the other hand, is huge and there would be room for more.
After all, the future is all to be imagined.