Yet another #Artemis II article (from a French press agency, no less) ignoring that propulsion, power, & life support to the Orion capsule are provided by ESA’s European Service Module.
Built in Bremen by Airbus, with parts from all over Europe, e.g. solar wings made in Leiden.
Also no mention of the fact that the ESM’s for the Moon-landing Artemis IV & V missions are to be supplied as part of ESA’s contribution to the Lunar Gateway.
Which NASA cancelled last week.
@markmccaughrean Maybe I didn't read the thread carefully enough, but what does that cancellation mean for the planned moon landing?
🤔
@kallekn I'm not fully up-to-speed on all the details, but the original Moon landing mission was supposed to Artemis III, but was already moved to IV. ESM-3 & ESM-4 were delivered by Airbus to KSC in Aug 2024 & Nov 2025, respectively, so those parts of the hardware for those missions is in place.
Whether ESA will get its promised lunar astronauts (in principle the first should be German) & what happens to ESM-5 & 6, I don't know.
@kallekn That's all down to the Child King & whether his rockets can deliver the promised goods.
There's an awful lot of difficult work to be done to prove that the single HLS Starship can be refuelled in LEO by a whole fleet of other tanker & depot Starships (somewhere between 10 & 20!!) as is required.
Truly, the concept is utterly bananas & I don't know how / why anyone ever signed up to it.
I mean, Apollo was *far* simpler more than fifty years ago.
Mark McCaughrean
Kalle Kniivilä