N° 14–2019: Call for media: ESA ESTEC Open Day - ESA to the Moon

Programme

The theme of this year’s event is ‘ESA to the Moon’. Dutch ESA astronaut André Kuipers will be joined by pioneering Apollo astronauts Walt Cunningham, who flew on the first crewed Apollo mission, and Rusty Schweickart, who was the first person to fly the Lunar Module and use an Apollo lunar spacesuit for a spacewalk. As well as celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first Apollo lunar landing, the Open Day will also be looking forward, highlighting ESA’s role in returning people to the Moon, including contributing the service module to NASA’s Orion spacecraft and participating in the Lunar Gateway, a station around the Moon to act as a base for both robotic and human explorers. ESA is also working with Russian space agency Roscosmos on future lunar landers. Further ahead, ESA’s Director General Jan Wörner has proposed a ‘Moon village’ as a model for cooperative international lunar settlement.

ESTEC, hosting the annual Open Day, is ESA’s technical centre where new missions are designed, their industrial development is managed and the resulting satellites are tested for flight in space. 

Technical experts and a suite of space labs support the development of new technologies making future missions possible.

A detailed programme will be published by the end of September.

Location

ESA ESTEC, Keplerlaan 1, 2201 AZ Noordwijk, The Netherlands

Media accreditation

Media representatives with press or social media credentials have to register via https://www.esa.int/Contact/mediaregistration

Social media participants should check here that they meet the eligibility criteria before applying. Note that there is no dedicated social media event.

There will be interview possibilities with Director-General Jan Wörner, and Director of Technology, Engineering, and Quality Franco Ongaro, as well as opportunities to interact with ESTEC’s engineers and scientists working laboratories and on ESA projects.

Media will be required to bring official ID to the event.

Follow online

For live updates throughout the event, follow #ESAOpenDay on social media.

About the European Space Agency

The European Space Agency (ESA) provides Europe’s gateway to space.

ESA is an intergovernmental organisation, created in 1975, with the mission to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space delivers benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.

ESA has 22 Member States: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Slovenia is an Associate Member.

ESA has established formal cooperation with seven Member States of the EU. Canada takes part in some ESA programmes under a Cooperation Agreement.

By coordinating the financial and intellectual resources of its members, ESA can undertake programmes and activities far beyond the scope of any single European country. It is working in particular with the EU on implementing the Galileo and Copernicus programmes as well as with Eumetsat for the development of meteorological missions.

ESA develops the launchers, spacecraft and ground facilities needed to keep Europe at the forefront of global space activities.

Today, it develops and launches satellites for Earth observation, navigation, telecommunications and astronomy, sends probes to the far reaches of the Solar System and cooperates in the human exploration of space. ESA also has a strong applications programme developing services in Earth observation, navigation and telecommunications.

For further information, please contact:

ESA Newsroom and Media Relations

Tel. +31715654443

Email: media@esa.int