New equipment, new astronauts.

On April 22, the European space agency gave the certification to its new astronauts, among them was the Spaniard from León Pablo Álvarez Fernández, an aeronautical engineer who will be a tenured astronaut; We also have Sara García Alonso, molecular biologist and cancer researcher, although at the moment she is a substitute astronaut, this does not mean that at any time she will also become a starter.

We will be able to see these new astronauts in the coming years carrying out experiments and missions on the International Space Station, on the future space station that will orbit the moon and possibly on the lunar surface, since the European space agency is one of the main partners in the Artemis program, led by NASA. It is one of the main ones but it seems that it is not the main partner, at least that is what can be deduced from what happened on April 10, that day NASA published a statement announcing that the President of the United States Biden and the Prime Minister of Japan signed an agreement by which NASA committed that textually "a Japanese citizen will be the first non-American astronaut in the United States." land on the moon!"

That statement may be somewhat risky, since the Chinese can get ahead; NASA also has other commitments such as, for example, taking the first woman and the first person of color to the moon, literally, this could happen in the Artemis 3 mission, which if there are no more delays it would be in September 2026, in that month We would see humans on the moon again as long as the Chinese overtake us. Another thing that came out of the agreement between the United States and Japan is the use of a Japanese explorer rover from Toyota, it is the futuristic dream of any fan of Camper vans, it is a lunar exploration vehicle on which the Japanese company is working Toyota for several years, in fact the images that were published are actually from 2019. It will be a pressurized Rover that will allow astronauts to travel further on the moon and perform science in geographically diverse areas, it will also serve as a mobile habitat and wheeled laboratory, it is designed for astronauts to live and work for long periods of time, it has an amazing autonomy, astronauts can live in it for up to 30 days and travel up to 10,000 km.

What will move this wonder will be an electric motor that will obtain its energy through hydrogen cells, the expected date for which it reaches the moon would be during the Artemis 7 mission in 2031 and the territory it will explore is the lunar South Pole, a region where it is believed that there are reserves of ice below the surface, something essential to be able to establish a permanent human base on the moon and also to supply energy to the Rover, since hydrogen can be extracted from water by applying electricity that can be obtained by means of solar panels.