The European Space Agency will negotiate future participation in NASA missions after the US space agency revamped its lunar program, the ESA head told AFP Wednesday.

The US space agency announced recently it is suspending its so-called Gateway lunar orbital space station efforts in order to focus on building a base on the moon's surface.

This left the European role in future exploration unclear. The ESA had an agreement with NASA for three astronaut flights to Gateway.

"The Gateway is postponed, therefore I will need to sit down with the administrator, that means Jared Isaacman, and the NASA team, to negotiate how these seats that have been earmarked for the Gateway can be utilized for the surface," ESA head Josef Aschbacher told AFP, speaking in English.

A German astronaut had been slated to fly first, followed by a French astronaut and later an Italian.

Aschbacher was speaking from the Kennedy Space Center, where phase two of the Artemis program proceeded Wednesday with a successful rocket launch of three Americans and one Canadian astronaut on a mission to fly around the moon.

The ESA director general said "this is a discussion that needs to take place right now."

"How many seats for the surface flight, or under which conditions, or what is the countervalue that Europe needs to bring into this bargaining and this discussion?" he said.

"The goal is to have Europeans walking on the moon," said Aschbacher, an Austrian who has helmed ESA since 2021.

"But of course, the dream, or the objective, is that eventually Europe develops its own technologies and capacities to have more autonomy on human spaceflight."

COMING UP: in a few hours at 23:43 UTC, a final burn will send the crew on their way to the Moon. This will be performed by our European Service Module's main engine.

NASA’s Artemis II mission blasted off on Wednesday. Now brace yourselves for exciting high-resolution 4K footage live-streamed of the surface of the moon thanks to NASA's laser-based O2O system. The cutting-edge Orion Artemis II Optical Communications system (O2O) will be used to beam 4K moon footage at up to 260 Mbps. We should also be treated to never-before-seen views of “the far side of the Moon, using Nikon digital cameras,” reports The BBC’s Sky at Night magazine.

ARTEMIS II IS GO FOR TRANS-LUNAR INJECTION! Mission Control Houston just confirmed to Orion Integrity, following a meeting of the Mission Management Team (MMT).

Time-lapse of the successful ICPS-Orion proximity test!

Just 1,500 feet (457 m) from the Artemis II launch, we deployed our special high-resolution, slow-motion camera to record the blast-off in jaw-dropping detail at 2,000 frames per second. Find out how we did it: on.natgeo.com/0BXGmi

Artemis II launch in VERY slow motion

Artemis II launch from the tower in slow motion. ‍Graded and re-interpolated by me, shot by NASA!

“I’m the space plumber, I’m proud to call myself the space plumber.”

Mission specialists like Christina H Koch train for all roles so they can jump in wherever they’re needed. Sometimes that means fixing vital machinery, like the spacecraft toilet.

In this image, also taken from the Orion capsule, we see the divide between night and day, known as the terminator, cutting across Earth. Whether awake or dreaming, we're all here on this planet together.

Artemis II update: our European Service Module's main engine performed the translunar injection so precisely that flight controllers in Houston decided to cancel the first of three outbound trajectory correction burns on the way to the Moon🥳

Working up an appetite!

As Victor Glover gets in his exercise for the day, Jeremy R. Hansen is preparing the crew's midday meal.

You've seen his visualizations. Now, meet the man who knows the far side of the Moon like the back of his hand.

Ernie Wright maps the Moon, which comes in handy when training NASA Artemis astronauts to see parts of the lunar surface humans have never laid eyes on before.