"We Will Build The Gateway": Lunar Gateway’s Future Has Been Rocky – But ESA Confirms It’s A Go

The European Space Agency (ESA) has a bold plan for human exploration in space, and it seems like the member states are ready to back it. This week, IFLScience is reporting from the agency's Ministerial Council for 2025, where its budget and its priorities have just been approved. Both low-Earth orbit and deep space exploration are back on the list of possibilities, and ESA has big plans, especially as NASA's proposed 2026 budget cuts leave the status of long-planned and future international missions up in the air. 

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There were two main focuses in the discussions: the Moon and what happens following the retirement of the International Space Station in 2030. The space agency has set a clear plan for what it wants to achieve, so let's dive in. 

Lunar Gateway lives!

In terms of human exploration of the Moon, ESA has stated its commitment to the Artemis program and Lunar Gateway. The long-planned Gateway will be an international space station in orbit around the Moon, which would provide an orbital base for astronauts going to the lunar surface and possibly even farther. The International Space Station (ISS) is due to be retired and de-orbited in 2030. 

The fate of Lunar Gateway has been a bit uncertain since the proposed 2026 budget by the Trump administration cut it out completely. It also removed the need for European hardware for the Artemis mission by canceling the Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion spacecraft – for which ESA has provided the European Service Module (ESM).

We will build the Gateway.

Alexander Gerst, ESA astronaut

“We will build the Gateway. It's a space station that's set to orbit the moon as a base station, as a base camp to go down to the surface,” ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst, who is one of the European astronauts that will likely take part in an upcoming trip on Artemis, told IFLScience. “Two modules of the gateway will come from Europe. We also built the spaceship that actually will fly the Artemis missions, [the ESM that will guide] the Orion spaceship.”

The ESM might be repurposed on an “autonomous modular cargo tug,” following Artemis IV, the last mission of the program currently funded with SLS and Orion. 

For Artemis III and Artemis IV, Orion would have taken astronauts to lunar orbit before SpaceX's Starship takes them to the surface. Due to the many explosions and setbacks that the Elon Musk vehicle has experienced this year, it is very doubtful that SpaceX will make the 2027 timeline for Artemis III. A leaked SpaceX document suggests that September 2028 is a more likely date. For this reason, NASA moved to ask other private companies to step up, which had led to a series of childish insults online between Musk and the current head of NASA, former TV personality Sean Duffy. 

The US budget has not been approved yet, so the situation from the US side might change, but NASA plans to move on to fully private missions to the Moon following Artemis IV, and going there directly without the need for the Gateway. 

No matter what the future holds for Artemis and Lunar Gateway, ESA has a lot of plans for the Moon. The Moonlight Programme will develop infrastructure and systems that will allow communication and navigation services around the Moon. First up will be the launch of Lunar Pathfinder next year, which will provide data relay from 2027, even though the astronauts might not get there. This is one of the steps towards a Solar-System-wide internet system.

ESA also has plans for a lunar landing system called Argonaut 1, which will deliver materials for lunar exploration both robotic and human. On the current timeline, the first landing is expected to happen in late 2030. While several other agencies have soft landed on the Moon, ESA has never done that. 

A lot of ESA's plans are in fact not revolutionary with respect to the history of space exploration, but they are gamechangers for the agency. This is particularly true when it comes to low-Earth orbit or LEO. 

The ISS will continue to orbit until 2030 and then be retired the following year. It will fly into the atmosphere and fall, in a controlled re-entry into the Pacific Ocean at the famous Point Nemo, where spacecraft go to die.

There will be private space stations, so astronauts will still be working near the Earth and not just on and around the Moon. ESA plans to support the work on LEO in multiple ways, including the possibility of European contributions to future LEO infrastructure.

“It's fantastic that we can serve the three important destinations that we have, which is low Earth orbit, the Moon, and Mars,” Gerst told IFLScience. Regarding the plans to have more European launch vehicles, he added, “That's super important because it gives us a way into participating in commercial space stations. After the end of ISS, there will be those stations!”

ESA has plans in place to make a greener circular economy in space, and it is spearheading the initiative to have zero debris in low-Earth orbit. Space junk remains a very serious concern – take the recently stranded taikonauts, for example.

Back to the Moon?

ESA doesn’t have reusable rockets yet, but it might soon have a reusable cargo craft: the LEO Cargo Return Service, an uncrewed spacecraft that can bring material to and from space. ESA wants to test this vehicle before the ISS comes down – a very quick turnaround. 

“We have never mastered that capability and demonstrated it. So for Europe it's a big step, and I really hope that it's a step towards enhanced ambition,” astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, who leads the LEO Cargo Return Service initiative, told IFLScience. 

“If we're able with LEO cargo to demonstrate that we can develop this vehicle in cooperation with industry, if we're able to show that we can do this in a short amount of time (we're talking by mid-2029) which is really, really, really fast, and also with the manageable budget, then I hope that this will give courage and comfort on member states to dare the next step – which is, of course, transportation of humans.”

When you have humans involved, there is a whole new world that, you know, we have to learn and master.

Samantha Cristoforetti, ESA astronaut

Russia's Roscosmos and the Chinese Space Agency have their own crew-graded spacecraft to launch cosmonauts and taikonauts, respectively, into space. NASA relies on private companies such as SpaceX with the Crew Dragon and Boeing with Starliner, although the latter's first crew test had a series of issues leading to stranded astronauts and the capsule coming back uncrewed. New tests, first uncrewed and then crewed, are expected in 2026. 

ESA wants its own way to send astronauts into space independently. The road to such goal is long, but the plans are there. If ESA can deliver on those plans, it might more easily push even farther out. We asked Cristoforetti about the challenges of such a LEO vehicle and if the hope is one day to take it all the way to the Moon. 

“It's not just engineering, it's not just building a vehicle, but when you have humans involved, there is a whole new world that, you know, we have to learn and master,” Cristoforetti explained. “Things like safe recovery when a crew comes back, rescue in case something goes wrong. I mean it's a whole thing and then I certainly hope that, in a subsequent step, we can even dare to go beyond LEO.”

The challenges are set, the goals are ambitious, and the timeline is tight. Will ESA live up to all of that? Only time will tell.