Dr. Johann Dietrich “Jan” Wörner gave a beautiful lecture a few days ago – in the frame of the Space Renaissance Academy Webinar Series, coordinated by Sabine Heinz –, illustrating his favorite concept “Not going back, but going forward to the Moon”. Btw, that was also the subject of a brief speech he gave, as one of the keynote speakers, at the SRI 3rd World Congress, end of June 2021.Dr. Wörner was the Director General of the European Space Agency since 2015 to 2021.His mandate was somehow revolutionary: while the ESA’s strategy was still focused on Telecommunication, Science and Earth Observation, he dared to put on the table the concept of a Moon Village, a permanent human outpost on the Moon, dedicated to experiment life, to explore and conduct scientific research on the Moon.
The Moon Village is one of the main topics illustrated during the lecture: the Moon is the next interesting part of the Solar System. The Moon Village is proposed as a multi-partner open project, to develop many operations on the Moon surface, human and robotic, public and private, exploration, outreach, cosmology/astronomy, transportation, communication, logistics, resources management.