But one contender is strangely missing. Europe hasn’t been to lunar orbit since 2006 and has never attempted a lunar landing. In the meantime, China has conquered the lunar far side and brought to Earth samples from that unexplored region. Japan and India both cracked the challenging lunar descent and touchdown, deploying rovers that briefly roamed the lunar surface. On top of that a string of private companies, funded through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, have made sometimes more, sometimes less successful landing attempts.

The European Space Agency (ESA), an intergovernmental organization entrusted with leading the European space program, didn’t respond to Supercluster’s interview request. But one source that spoke to Supercluster anonymously said that Europe simply has other priorities and isn’t interested in what some see merely as geopolitical signalling. 

“Europe doesn’t really get involved in races,” the source said. “Europe does space because of the science or the benefits for [its] citizens.”

But Europe has had a lander in the works — at least on paper — as late as 2019. The In-situ resource utilization demonstration (ISRU) mission was expected to reach the moon around 2025 and test a prototype lunar factory producing water and oxygen from the lunar soil. The mission was billed as a key contribution toward a sustained human presence on the moon.

In January 2019, SpaceRef reported that ESA awarded a contract to “study and prepare” the mission to a consortium involving Belgian space tech and services company Space Applications Services and Berlin-based PTScientists. Space Applications Services were to provide “the ground segment and communications” while PTScientists — a one-time competitor in the Google Lunar X-Prize — were to build the lander. 

Only six months later, in July 2019, PTScientists filed for bankruptcy protection, according to Space News, but was acquired by an unknown buyer to continue its work under the altered name Planetary Transportation Systems. 

In 2021, the renewed company managed to win a contract to develop electronics for a new upper stage of Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket. A cubesat built by Planetary Transportation Systems was among the payload lofted to space on the debut flight of Ariane 6 in July 2024. The company’s trail, however, ends after that. Its website no longer appears to exist; its activity on social media ceased around the time of the first Ariane 6 launch. 

A source familiar with the situation that spoke to Supercluster anonymously said the ISRU demonstration mission early-stage study was concluded but the project didn’t proceed beyond “a bunch of PDF files on some ESA servers.”

Since March 2025, however, Space Applications Services has its own contract with ESA to develop two lunar rovers — the LUVMI-M rover for commercial payload hosting and the larger Lunar Prospecting & Scouting Rover (LPSR)  for transporting cargo on the moon’s surface. 

Jeremi Gancet, a systems department manager at Space Applications Services, told Supercluster in an email that these missions are aiming for launch in 2027 and 2030, respectively.

“LUVMI-M relies primarily on company investment, complemented by funding from [the Belgian Science Policy Office],” said Gancet. “Funding is provisioned until [we reach] readiness for the first mission. The extent of the LPSR Phase 2 funding will be announced at the ESA Ministerial Council in November this year.” 

The Space Applications Services contracts are part of ESA’s recent drive to actually join the moon race after all. But seemingly only after everybody else has made it through the finish line. 

In September 2023, ESA launched a call for “small missions to the moon,” which could involve orbiters, landers and rovers and cost less than 50 million euros ($58 million). For comparison, India’s triumphant Chandrayaan-3, which delivered the Vikram lander and the Pragyan rover to the lunar south pole in 2023, cost $75 million.

The European subsidiary of Japan-headquartered lunar transportation company ispace (like PTScientist a former finalist in the Google Lunar X-Prize) also has an early-stage contract with ESA as part of that initiative. The company, which crashed its second moon-bound spacecraft during a landing attempt earlier this month, is developing a mission concept called the Mission for Advanced Geophysics and Polar Ice Exploration, or MAGPIE.

The MAGPIE, if it were to make it to the moon, would search for water ice deposits around the moon’s poles. In a statement on its website, ispace said the MAGPIE mission would “take Europe a step closer to developing resource utilization and surface operations.”

ESA’s indecisive attitude toward lunar exploration may have something to do with the structure of its programs, one source told Supercluster. ESA covers a vast scope of activities. It explores planetary bodies in the solar system, studies the universe at large, builds remote-sensing satellites to monitor Earth, develops navigation and telecommunication systems and trains astronauts for stays on the International Space Station and possibly beyond. 

Out of these programs, only space science is mandatory, meaning that each of the agency’s 22 member states must contribute to the program’s budget based on the country’s GDP. The exploration of the moon and Mars currently doesn’t fall into the space science program, the source said, but rather into the voluntary Human and Robotic Exploration Program, which not every member state contributes to.

“We've had this mantra in Europe called ‘Space for Earth’, where we have tried to link space to the benefits that satellites provide for citizens down on Earth, and that includes space science satellites,” the source said. “Robotic exploration of the moon [makes] a lot of sense. You could do many interesting things, like deploying telescopes on the moon, even though it’s challenging. But for a long time, Europe has not been interested because it had moved its focus to Mars. It basically jumped over the idea of doing a rover on the moon and focused on the ExoMars mission instead.”

The ExoMars mission intends to deliver Europe’s first rover to Mars to search for traces of life under the planet’s surface with the help of a 2-meter-long drill. The mission, however, has suffered its own avalanche of setbacks. Initially scheduled to launch in 2018, the mission’s 2022 lift-off was cancelled after ESA ceased cooperation with Russia’s space agency ROSCOSMOS following the invasion of Ukraine. The rover, dubbed Rosalind Franklin, is now awaiting a new landing platform, as the original one, built by Russia, had to be let go. The mission may be under further threat as cuts to NASA’s budget, proposed by the administration of United States President Donald Trump, would end the American agency’s participation in the mission — something ESA might struggle to make up for.

ESA’s interest in the moon has for years been shaped by NASA’s initiatives, which, some sources say, are in effect a response to the expansive ambitions and impressive progress of China. 

“Between 2005 and 2010, the American industry started whispering that the Chinese are coming, we need to go back to the moon,” the source said. “It was clear it would cost a lot of money, so they talked to their partners on the International Space Station — countries like Canada, Europe and Japan — to join this new Artemis program. It was essentially a coalition of the willing to make it more feasible to get the funding.”

ESA was entrusted with building the service module for the Orion space capsule and a few modules for the planned Gateway station in the moon’s orbit.

The agency also committed to developing a large logistics lander called Argonaut, which could make it to the moon’s surface at some point in the early 2030s. The Franco-Italian aerospace conglomerate Thales Alenia Space bagged the nearly $900 million contract to develop and deliver the lander in January this year. 

ESA’s Explore2040 space exploration strategy cites among its key lunar ambitions the delivery of a European person to the moon’s surface by 2030. That goal is now in jeopardy too, as Trump’s administration intends to reduce the lunar exploration program to refocus directly on Mars. 

In the meantime, a few European countries have made independent attempts to visit the moon on their own. An Italian cubesat called AgroMoon hitched a ride to lunar orbit on the NASA-led Artemis 1 mission, which tested the Orion space capsule in an uncrewed flight in 2022. The cubesat’s task was to monitor Orion’s separation from the rocket upper stage, but the satellite also sent home a few images of Earth and the moon. In 2014, Luxembourg partnered with China to launch a simple scientific payload including an amateur radio transmitter and a dosimeter measuring ionizing radiation. The device flew on China’s Chang'e 5-T1 mission, which tested technologies for China’s then planned lunar sample return mission, and remained attached to the Long March rocket upper stage that launched it. In 2022, the stack spiralled and crashed onto the moon after its orbit naturally degraded. 

The most ambitious European moon venture that might be within sight of a launchpad is the Lunar Pathfinder mission spearheaded by U.K-based Surrey Satellite Technology (SSTL).

Their mission, in the works since about 2020 and co-funded by ESA, will travel to the moon with a Firefly lander in 2026. From its position in the moon’s orbit, it will serve as a telecommunication relay for spacecraft and robots on the moon’s surface. 

aerospace consultant Philip Davies, who works on the mission’s business development plan, told Supercluster. “If you have a data relay satellite, you can store data and forward it to Earth when you have contact. With that, we will be able to collect a lot more data from [our] science payload.”

The mission is a precursor for an ESA-funded constellation of telecommunication and navigation satellites called Moonlight, which aims to provide an equivalent to GPS for explorers on the moon’s surface.

A preliminary design contract for Moonlight was awarded last year to Telespazio, but Davies said the program is not yet fully funded. The constellation, expected to consist of five satellites, might make it to the moon in the early 2030s. 

Davies thinks that Europe’s hesitation around moon missions is partly linked to the uncertainty around the moon’s actual business potential. Despite the current lunar gold rush and enthusiastic hype, the case for long-term human presence on the moon or for mining of lunar materials for use on Earth is nowhere near bulletproof. 

“If you look at the market surveys about the lunar economy, you will see a lot of different opinions,” Davies said. “They all predict a very rapid uptake in missions to the moon. But if you go back in time, it’s never panned out as the market forecasts have predicted.”

So for now, Europe will take it slow, and hope that there will still be room in the pack if business gets going for real.