The ESM’s for Artemis I, II, III, & VI (if there ever is a VI if SLS is also cancelled) are provided by ESA as part of the barter for continued access to the ISS by European astronauts.

But ESM-4 & 5 are explicitly linked to Gateway, as are many other European-provided modules already under development, & which is now dead.

The trade also included seats on Artemis for European astronauts.

More on the ESM here:

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/Orion/European_Service_Module

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Service_Module

https://www.airbus.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2026-03-heart-of-the-mission-airbus-built-esm-to-power-historic-artemis-ii-crew-to-the-moon

To be clear, yes, the article is in a British newspaper, @guardian, but is directly sourced from @AFP.

Not that the articles written by the Guardian’s own journalists are necessarily any better, mind you:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/apr/02/artemis-ii-nasa-moon-launch-american-moment

And this is no UK anti-Europe bias; same across most Euro-media.

Some are doing better though, & I know the BBC are doing a piece today about the key role being played by the ESM, & ESA themselves are of course talking up the ESM.

All of which begs the question of why this is.

Perhaps it’s a combination of media laziness, elisions in the material being issued by NASA, and the general view that only NASA does space anyway (despite plenty of evidence to the contrary).

Or is there perhaps a lack of interest from the European public in Artemis, not least given the broad rejection of the current US government & its ugly imperialism, much of which manifests itself in anti-European rhetoric & action?

And of course it’s entirely possible (personally, I think likely) that the wider European public isn’t especially interested in human spaceflight.

At least not in the way that superpowers like the US & China are, where it’s part of soft power propaganda & national myth-making.

After all, there are many other priorities on this planet, arguably more pressing than going to the Moon, such as climate change, security, & resource management, areas where space also plays a critical role though.

These are issues that ESA will have to carefully & honestly examine with its Member States in the coming months, as they try to come up with a strategy for human spaceflight that takes into account its deep current dependence on an increasingly unreliable partner.

Do European governments & the European public believe that an independent human spaceflight capability is desirable & affordable?

IMO, it’s perfectly ok if the answer to that is no. But the current model appears very broken.

@markmccaughrean Quite a lot of people used to be really excited about manned space exploration, myself being one of them, but current events have made us almost indifferent to it. To refer to a professional author's take:

https://wandering.shop/@cstross/116339668629978498