How Japan beat Europe to become America's BFF on the moon

Geopolitics explains why the astronaut that lands on the moon with NASA in 2026 will not be French, German or Italian.

Meanwhile, the White House is also pushing allies to sign the Artemis Accords, its preferred rules of the road for lunar business. | Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

April 18, 2024 6:32 pm CET

Sayonara Macron, Scholz, and Meloni, your astronauts will simply have to wait.

U.S. President Joe Biden agreed this month to make a Japanese astronaut the first non-American to land on the moon, leaving veteran European space explorers from France, Germany, Italy and the U.K. to cool their jets and vie for later missions instead.

Under NASA's Artemis program the U.S. is to send astronauts to the moon in 2026 and to work on building a lunar space station and permanent presence on the moon's surface through a series of return missions.

Meanwhile, the White House is also pushing allies to sign the Artemis Accords, its preferred rules of the road for lunar business.

Europe has been on board with the program from the start, agreeing to build a service module for NASA's Orion spacecraft that will transport astronauts to the moon. The hope had been that the European Space Agency (ESA) would secure that coveted seat on Artemis 3 — the first mission to land humans on the moon since 1972.

"The Europeans wanted to be the first boots on the moon after the Americans, that's obvious," a space diplomat said on condition of anonymity following Biden's decision.

Instead, Tokyo got it.

The moon mission deal was announced this month by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida during a state visit to Washington, just days before the next generation of European astronauts graduate from basic training on April 22.

"There is a more general feeling in Europe we are being left out on Artemis," said Arthur Sauzay, a space lawyer at Allen & Overy, adding that a lack of coordination in how European countries signed up to the Artemis Accords also harmed the bloc's chances of getting the first ride.

Switzerland and Sweden became the latest European countries to sign the accords this past week, making them the 37th and 38th member countries.

But with China also corralling allies for a rival joint moon base project dubbed the  International Lunar Research Station, with Russia, Thailand, Pakistan and South Africa in the running among others, norm-setting for business on the moon is getting competitive.

"It's a geopolitical decision and it has a lot to do with China," said Hermann Ludwig Moeller, director of the European Space Policy Institute in Vienna.

The decision imperils Europe's hopes of becoming a premier player in future lunar missions, and highlights its fractured administration. ESA runs exploration and research operations for its members from Paris, but can't strike larger deals with major powers on economic cooperation, security or defense.

"It's not about barter or service agreements anymore, it's about geopolitics and how it sends a signal," Moeller said. "What we see here is space for diplomacy. That's not just about payloads or a rover."

Under existing deals ESA has three seats booked on future, yet-to-be-scheduled Artemis missions in exchange for the service module. Two of the seats are expected to cover the Artemis 4 and 5 missions, while will see parts of the new Gateway lunar space station transported into orbit before a moon landing is attempted.

Italy's Samantha Cristoforetti is a strong contender for a moon mission, with PM Giorgia Meloni standing behind her, while French President Emmanuel Macron opened the race to land a European on the lunar surface by tapping French astronaut Thomas Pesquet to accompany him to a meeting with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris in 2021.

"We are expecting that these flights happen before 2030, but the exact sequence still has to be decided by NASA in view of the progress of the Artemis program," an ESA spokesperson said.