When Luca Parmitano looks up at the Moon glowing in the night sky, his sense of wonder is mixed with personal anticipation. As an experienced member of the European astronaut corps, he stands a good chance of flying there — “the ultimate dream of someone like me who has trained as a test pilot.”
Parmitano hopes to take part in a mission in the late 2020s to build the Lunar Gateway, an international space station that will orbit the Moon and support the US-led Artemis programme to establish a human presence on the lunar surface. “Helping to construct the Moon’s first permanent infrastructure is what my whole career has been heading towards,” says the 47-year-old Italian.
For several decades after the Apollo landings, Earth left the Moon alone. Then a wave of uncrewed missions started in 2008-09 when Indian, Chinese and Japanese spacecraft reached the lunar surface. In 2013 China’s Chang’e-3 made a soft landing.