European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano discusses the international elements of the Gateway lunar space station. HWHAP Episode 348.
Houston, we have a podcast.
Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space center, episode 348, gateway together to the moon.
I'm Courtney Beasley, and I will be your host.
Today on this podcast, we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers, and astronauts, all to let you know what's going on in the world of human spaceflight.
In episode 344, you heard NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik and engineer Stephanie Dudley introduce Gateway and share how it will support a new generation of scientific discovery on the lunar surface, surface, and in deep space.
If you haven't listened to that yet, it's a really great introduction to Gateway, and I recommend you give it a listen.
For our second installment in our monthly Gateway series, we are going to dig into some of the international elements of the station from ESA, the European Space Agency, and JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
And who better to tell us all about those than the international astronaut working on Artemis, ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano.
Luca was selected as an ESA astronaut in 2009.
He's from Italy and considers Catania to be his hometown.
His first mission to the International Space Station was in 2013, where he participated in hundreds of science experiments and two spacewalks.
He went back to the station in 2019, where he conducted even more science, became the first italian to serve as the commander of the International Space Station, and completed four more spacewalks for a total of 33 hours and nine minutes spent in the vacuum of space.
In recent years.
Luca is ESA's lead astronaut and the European Astronaut Center's JSC liaison officer, spending much of his time traveling between Europe and Houston.
He wears many hats, like training astronauts for spacewalks and, most relevant for today's podcast, bringing his astronaut experience to bear for Artemis, NASA's return to the Moon, which includes Gateway, the lunar space station, where astronauts like Luca will live, conduct science, and prepare for missions to the lunar South Pole region.
For today, true to his nature, Luca will talk about how both Issa and JAXA are central to Gateway.
Let's go.
Houston, we have a podcast.
All right, well, Luca, thanks for coming on.
Houston, we have a podcast today.