Moon mission potential

“The moon is like our eighth continent; it’s still almost virgin territory,” says Alexander Gerst. At the European Space Agency (ESA), the 50-year-old heads a department that supports future missions to the moon. In 2014 and 2018, Gerst took part in long-term missions of the International Space Station (ISS), spending a total of one year in space. He had been fascinated by expeditions even as a student of geophysics: he travelled from Karlsruhe to the Antarctic to undertake vulcanology research and went to New Zealand on a DAAD scholarship. From space, he witnessed areas on Earth that were stricken by drought or had been cleared of rainforest – ever since, he has been a tireless campaigner for conservation and climate action. ―

From a pool of over 8,400 applicants, ESA picked Samantha Cristoforetti for its astronaut training programme. In 2014/2015 the Italian spent an uninterrupted period of nearly seven months on board the ISS, became its first European female commander in 2022 and is also the first European woman to have completed a spacewalk. These days, she is committed to getting girls interested in space and STEM subjects. The 49-year-old, who speaks five languages fluently, studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and was an Erasmus+ scholarship holder in Toulouse and Moscow. ―

Matthias Maurer once described the time he spent as an Erasmus+ student at the University of Leeds in 1993 as the beginning of his journey into space: “I believe my European path played a key part in my selection by ESA.” Born in 1970, Maurer studied for a time in Nancy and Barcelona as part of his degree in materials science and engineering at Saarland University. A short-term scholarship from the DAAD also enabled him to spend two months in South Korea. In 2021, Maurer first flew to the ISS, where he was involved in numerous scientific experiments. He is currently undergoing intensive training for lunar flights on the Artemis programme – and is hoping to already have the chance to take part in a moon mission in 2028. ―