The Moon and the European Space Exploration will hear why we should go back to the Moon

after 44 years. And we are very pleased to have Jan Werner as our honored guest this evening and he is the current Director General of the European Space Agency. He is also the former Chairman of the Executive Board of the German Aerospace

Center also known as DLR. And you would expect that he would be an aerospace engineer, but he started out as a civil engineer. For the Germans, das heißt bow engineer.

He got the federal cross of merit first class for his continuous engagement for young academics. And unfortunately, to list all of his doctorates would really take too much time off of his limited talk time.

So please give it up for Jan Werner. Yes, okay. No, no. You have to be quiet because they did not give me enough time. So you have to be quiet and I recommend you to listen and see.

And if possible, do the whole lecture I will give to you in slow motion afterwards because otherwise I cannot do it in 30 minutes. So what is the return of investment of space? This is a question I get nearly every day. I hope not in this room, but I will answer it anyhow. And the question is, is return of investment always just the money?

If you look into our universe, you know, we have something like galaxies and the galaxies are rotating. And according to all our theories, which we know about Newton and about gravity, the speed at the outer part should be slower than in the inner part, because otherwise these stars would escape.

But observation showed that the speed at the outer part is exactly the same as in the inner part and we don't understand this effect and therefore we gave it a new name and we call it dark matter. So it's not something we really see, it's just an effect. So why I'm talking about this? Because there's another effect which is called dark matter, dark energy.

Dark energy, if you have a big bang and then the universe is expanding, according to just the law of gravity, this velocity, the acceleration should decrease, the velocity should decrease and finally it should implode again. And for several billions of years, fortunate enough, the universe behaved like we thought,

but then it changed and now it's accelerating again. We don't know why, we have no clue about it and therefore we call it dark energy. Dark energy and dark matter is more than 95% of our universe, so it's not a negligible part.

But there are also some aspects even closer. In our solar system, the scientists said, okay, let's prove that really Pluto is the last planet of our solar system. Yeah, a planet. Some saying you're not a planet. Okay, that's fine, but no, no, no, afterwards, afterwards, I have no time.

So Pluto, the last, let's say, micro planet or something like that, and they try to prove it with all their theory and suddenly they found there must be another planet. Nobody ever saw it, but it seems that there is something outside of Pluto.

We know the size, we don't know anything about it, so all of this is example of where we need curiosity. Curiosity is the strongest driver we have and we should not forget about it. Just look to Albert Einstein, you know, of course, his theory of relativity, I have here the equation just that you remember it, and he said in the special theory of relativity,

time is slowed down by velocity and in the general theory of relativity, time is slowed down by gravity. What the hell is the return of investment of this equation? What is the benefit to society? If you ask politicians, you will get an easy answer.

No meaning, everything is relative. This is the best sentence you can get. So now, the question is, is it really just an academic idea without any consequence? If you look to satellite navigation, we have the satellites flying around the Earth really fast, really fast means there must be some effect on the timing, and they are

far away from the Earth, so the gravity of the Earth is much lower, there must be also some effect on the timing. And the satellites, the navigation satellites are nothing more than really exact clocks.

So if these two effects are there, then there should be an effect also on our, on the navigational system. And in fact, without knowing this theory, you would have a mistake, an error of about 500 meters in one hour. That means, let's be curious also for the future, even if we don't see a return of

investment the next four weeks, let's be curious because this is the main message also of exploration. We have, yeah, no, no, no, no, it's okay. We have, but we have also concrete aspects, global challenges we call them, like climate change, like migration, mobility, communication, energy, shortage of resources, you can

read all yourself. But there is again, this curiosity, it's a different type of challenge. But it's the strongest driver which brought us out of the caves, above the mountains in the next valley, even we crossed the Atlantic Ocean, whether it was an advantage or not, I don't know, but anyhow, we did it by that.

And therefore, curiosity is the strongest driver, and this strongest driver is now part of space, and what I call space 4.0, this is a new generation of space where we look into commercialization, but also in participation with citizens in digitalization, information, innovation, interaction, inspiration, and so on.

And you see here what we at ESA are doing. We are covering all the different aspects, we are looking to earth observation, to navigation, to telecommunication, to science and exploration, to new launch systems, but also reentry vehicles, to technology operations, we even look to space debris and meteorites, and we are

looking to new technologies and also to things procurement with industry. So ESA is the European Space Agency, and as we are international with 22 member states within Europe, plus Slovenia, plus Canada, we are not part of the European Union, we are trying also to be a global player with all the different states around the globe,

so we are, with our international nature, we can play together with all the others as well. Therefore, ESA is an agency not only, but it's also a broker, mediator, and enabler for global cooperation in space. And space for us today is not only having a satellite and giving some data to the ground,

but space is now something, a source of new information, also a source of new technologies, Teflon Pan does not come from space, but other aspects, and we are now using also earthly technologies in space, so it's a totally new world which we are now covering.

And what I said already is space 4.0 means also more participation with people, not only with politicians, not only with space agencies. And we tried this last year, no this year, to really discuss with different people from different countries, I will give you only a short example of that, what happened. So we did, can you do it a little bit louder?

And you can switch off this light. Space, the final frontier. You should know that one.

So I could do it for half an hour, but then I would not be able to talk about more, so I will stop it over here. If you're interested in that, you can see it on our internet page, you can get all of these different nations and how the people are reacting. So we had more than 2,000 participants from 22 countries at the same time meeting in the

different countries and discussed with them not only questionnaires or simple things like that, but really had a debate and the results were very promising. I have here only a few of the results. I don't go to all of this, I go just to the last one, because this one I was very surprised about. 81% said exploit natural resources from space.

This is a really very difficult question. Should we really go outside the Earth and get resources back to Earth? So we can discuss about that whenever you like. This is a very, very important question we have to answer. But you see also here, a universe of possibilities and opportunities, a place to be

protected from polluting and potentially harmful human activity. So all of this was said with very high percentage. So out of this citizen debate, we got a lot of input and therefore participation is for me a very important thing. But now look to exploration. I said curiosity. I tried to explain to you why I believe that exploration is important. This is the sentence of a philosopher.

It's much better than a civil engineer can say. We will not see it from exploration until we come back to where we came from and see the place for the first time. I don't understand it, but I think it's a very good sentence and therefore I'm using it. Water, water is something we are using day by day.

Have you ever thought about water in detail? Only, not only when you have to go to a restroom, but if you want to drink something. Water is very interesting. Water covers about more than 70 percent of our Earth's surface. It's transparent, which is not automatically, it's transparent. There is some anomaly of water, meaning that you have ice is lighter than water at

about four degrees. We have special behavior between temperature and viscosity. It's not poisonous. It's tasteless. It's odorless. It has a high surface tension. There is a very special thing. You can have water with hydrogen or you can hydrogen have with another neutron at the core.

Then you have deuterium. You can have two different types of water, heavy water and light water. And you have many, many applications day by day. But the question is, where is the water from? Again, people would say, I don't care. We have 70 percent of the surface. This is enough for me. But as a curious person, I think to ask the question, where does the water come from?

Is an important question. And there were the scientists were discussing about it. And after a long, long discussion, they said it comes from comets because comets are frozen material and therefore they planned a mission called Rosetta. You have heard about it.

To fly to the comet. It took us 10 years to go there without any maintenance. Maintenance in between, no oil change or whatever. Of course, the software was updated a little bit, but the processor was more than 10 years old at the end. So it was really an old computer on board.

And this is an environment which is much harsher than this nice conquest center. So therefore, it was really a very difficult thing. And finally, we landed on the comet on the 12th of November. And this is the selfie. This is a selfie.

I was asked before landing, what is the probability that you will do this? And I said, I have no idea because it's the very first time. And if you do something for the first time, you don't know about probability. In fact, we landed and because of the small gravity, we were afraid that it will be pushed back.

So it has some harpoons to keep it on the ground. Unfortunately, these harpoons did not work. It has a special engine to keep down. Unfortunately, this engine did not work. So it hopped up again, several hours, landed again, hopped again and so on. So now I can tell you we had more than three landings and it's perfect. We can do first statistics of it.

Now, I will, I will now, I need now your silence because I will show you the noise during the first landing. This is, it's just a repetition again. I like it very much. So we will repeat again.

Now I have it also in slow motion for you. So now this is, of course, not, there is no atmosphere. So it's the sound in the legs. And the reason we measured this was in order to get some input about the quality, about the surface toughness of this tiny comet.

And by analyzing this noise, we can directly get some information. So now I mentioned about the water issue. Now we looked on this, on this comet also about water. And the interesting thing was, yes, there was water and organic material. However, the ratio between heavy water and light water was totally and is totally different to the one we have on Earth.

On Earth, it's more or less constant. This comet has a three times higher percentage of heavy water. So the question remains, where does the water come from? We don't know, maybe partly from these type of comets, maybe also from other comets.

Now, this is a very important movie to show a little bit the different cultures in different countries.

And hopped on top. We did not know where it was. And we were very lucky on the 5th of September, we found it finally over there in a very shadow place.

And that was the reason that it did not could charge again its batteries, but it worked perfectly for the first 60 hours. And this was what we wanted to reach. And this is the last image of the main spacecraft Rosetta, which you also finally touched down on the comet. So we got some additional information from the surface coming close to the surface.

So I mentioned again, Rosetta, Philae and the comet, and these comets are dark as charcoal. So you need a very special camera to have an image of it, because it has even more than 50 shades of grey. And this camera technology was then developed also to use it on Earth for early fire detection.

And this is something I can also always show to people asking for a return of investment. I say, yes, because of this, everything is fine. I don't need this proof, but I hope you understand. Now we have also human spaceflight, and it was mentioned the Apollo flights to the moon. That was the race in space with the result, we all know the Americans were winning this race,

but the robotic technologies of the Soviet Union was also rather impressive. And this is the most famous picture. I'm sure you know all of you all know it. It shows Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon. He was very angry that he could not be the first one.

And so he always asked Neil Armstrong, take a photo, take a photo, take a photo. In this picture, you see here Neil Armstrong over there in the video. And this picture was photoshopped by NASA. They were on the moon. Yes, I asked the NASA administrator, have you really been there? And he said it was much more expensive.

It would have been much more expensive to keep all people silent. And therefore they were there. But this picture is photoshopped because NASA thought above this, there should be some dark, dark sky. And unfortunately, Neil Armstrong had the picture closed over here.

So there was something missing. And they finally put some plaque over it in order to show there is some black sky. Why do I know that? Very simply because of this. Oh, there you see the antenna is missing over here. There is no antenna. And this is the reason it was photoshopped.

So but trust me, they were there. So in 2014, we had the Crimea crisis, which is still going on. And it's very important to see that space can overcome all of these problems, or at least bridge it. And this is a picture directly after the Crimea conflict started. It shows an American and Russian

and a European astronaut with a German accent like me. It's Alexander Gerst. And they were sitting here. And minutes later, they stand in front of the Soyuz rocket. This is my hand, by the way. I hope you can believe me. And they are here. They are now entering.

I should not say so, sir, that's not so good. OK, then they started. That's marvelous to see that and to feel it in Russia or in Kazakhstan. And this was a place where they are going. It's the Americans, the Russians, the Japanese, the Europeans

and the Canadians in the International Space Station. OK, Alexander Gerst, of course, did a lot of experiments. He looked also to Earth and reported about that. And the German journal said, this is not OK. He should not think about emotions. He should do research. But I think it's very nice if you show pictures like that.

It's also nice if you show pictures like that. Staying there, explosions and bombing on Earth. It's not something we should do. I mean, consider an alien flying to the Earth and see what we are doing. I'm not so sure whether he or she would come friendly. Anyhow, you see, this is a picture I like, also of Alexander Gerst.

And then he landed. And this is what the Russians call a soft landing. Because you have to keep it with the soft part of your body. And you will see it. It's really harsh now, but he was in good shape. And then the question was how to get him home. And I asked the Americans, can we not bring him directly to Europe?

And they said, yes, but Kazakhstan, we will fly from Kazakhstan to Scotland. You can come to Scotland and bring him to Europe. I said, fine. But they said, but you have to have a plane with intensive care. Where to get intensive care?

I asked the German Air Force. The minister did not accept that because the taxpayers would not allow because of one astronaut that the plane is flying. So I looked for another one. And there is a so-called ADAC, the automobile club. And they have planes. So I called the president of that club and said, can you bring us

Mr. Gerst to Europe? And he said, yes, if you allow us that we publish it in our monthly journal, ADAC Motorwelt for the Germans. And this is one of the most famous journals. The other one comes from the pharmacies, Apothekenrundschaue.

And so and then he said, I have a final question. Is he a member? And I could say, yes, yes. He was brought back.

He was brought back to Germany, in this case, to Cologne. But where are we going in the next case? There should be no ultimate goal. Humans are always going further and further. Therefore, I think we should not talk about an ultimate goal. The Americans in Gaza is right now saying, let's go to Mars. They say journey to Mars, which means more than a trip to Mars.

But to go to Mars with humans is really difficult. It takes about two years back and to go there and coming back because of the different orbits of moon and Mars. And you see here some issues we have to go to moon. You can do it during Christmas and

a new year. So instead of going to Hamburg, you can also go to the moon. So there are some companies saying, OK, we must just make a one way trip. I'm not in favor of that one. But we are right now with the European mission ExoMars. We are going to to Mars, but without humans.

So it is a robotic mission. The first one was launched already, and the second one should be launched in 2020. And one issue is to look for something like life, because we found methane on Mars. And the question is, is it from a biological source or is it from other sources? And therefore, we started this mission. And this was the launch in Kazakhstan.

And I like this picture very much because this is the French, the head of the French agency of the Italian agency, the myself Russian Space Agency. At that time, he was from the British Space Agency. So again, space is bridging all national problems and so on.

So we can do it. This was the first picture I was really happy about. That was the spacecraft flying towards Mars. And I was not sure whether it's on the right direction. But with that, I was sure, OK, we are really going to Mars. And then we had this nice picture. That was the idea of landing on Mars.

So we have two spacecraft. One is the so-called trace gas orbiter surrounding and orbiting Mars. And the other one is the this test module, which should we should enter into the atmosphere with a heat shield. Then with a parachute, then the heat shield should be separated.

Then the the parachute should be separated. Finally, some engine start. OK, you know the story. It was excellent until here. You see everything. Yes, yes, yes, yes. OK, we can forget about that. The problem was the spacecraft recognized that it's already underneath the surface

and that it makes no sense to have any longer parachute. So it separated the parachute. And it makes no sense to have a long time for the engine. So they stopped also the engines, but it was still too high. So we had a little bit harsh landing, but everything is fine. We got good information.

We have a good landing site. It's over here, you see. And we have not only one, we have several points because we have the parachute over here, the heat shield over there and the lander impact over there. We don't know what that is, but I'm sure

this picture shows now that Tracecar's orbiter is really active. And this is the more scientific part of that one. So we got all the data from the landing procedure. And now we're getting also data from the surface. And the Tracecar's orbiter also was working as a relay station.

So it worked perfectly. This was the press. Schiabarelli's mask crashed, making it two failed landing attempts from either. Very bad, very bad. We are OK. You know, another guy, this is Elon Musk. This was his third trial to land on a drone ship.

Everything was fine until here. Everything was excellent. But then something was not excellent. And that was the end of this rocket. So now, OK, now the question is, what about the press in this case? I mean, very similar. The satellite was in orbit like our TGO.

But during landing, something worked not perfectly. And this is a German newspaper translated it. SpaceX failed again with landing trial. Launcher absorbs crash landing. They are right, huh? The American said a little bit better. Falcon 9 almost landing. And and Elon Musk himself said, ship is fine.

Minor repairs. Exciting day. So now what are the goals for the future? Where to go? You know, this village. What is a village? In a village, you have diverse interests, you have diverse actors,

you have diverse activities, diverse calendars, but some joint idea to do something. This is number one, a village. Now you know what a village is. Now the second one is what is a concept? A concept is not a single project. It's not a fixed end to end plan. It's not a fully regulated installation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But it defines interfaces when needed. And these two words, village and concept, these are now put together in the concept moon surface operations. We are doing we can do the international activities, human, robotic, public, private exploration, pioneering, outreach and steam, science, technology, engineering, math and arts.

And we can do moon science. The moon is not really understood so far, but we can do moon science. We can do cosmology, especially if we go to the far side of the moon, which is not the dark side like Pink Floyd. The far side is as bright as the side on our side.

Fundamental research, technology, transportation, communication, logistics. We can do research management, planetary defense also, and a stepping stone. And this is therefore I call it a moon village with free and open access to everybody. No regulation at all. This is a picture.

And I hope that this community supports me, that this should be this astronaut, maybe is something which is also with car scout. And I will show you. You see, they already have the right flex. Moon village is already in the public.

It is the Americans are observing us. It is also the Federal Aviation Administration officially endorsed this, endorsed this moon village concept. There are some companies now arguing that they have the right architecture. This is a Scandinavian company. Some others believe we can use some

can use the moon for some other aspects. And you might really witness a long distance flight. The journey to Mars, is it in contradiction? Not at all, because if you want to go to Mars, you better make a pit stop at the moon village. And therefore, I hope

don't be don't keep calm, but keep active and be a villager. Thank you very much for your attention.

Thank you, Mr. Werner, for this awesome talk, and I think we have some time left for two questions, but only if you keep it very brief. So first, no comments. Secondly, a question and maximum two sentences.

Microphone one, please. OK, brief question. Yeah, what do you think will be the first piece of hardware that lands for the moon village on the moon and maybe when? Yeah, so it will be a Monday, of course. That's easy. And you see, it's as I said, it's not a plan that ESA

is now doing to stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff. It is that worldwide we have different actors. We have in the part time scientists, we have astro robotics. We have people from all over the world, and most of them have some plan either to go next year or the year after to the moon. And I'm quite sure it will be some some stuff.

I don't know. Maybe it's scientific. Maybe it's more to to to just to prove something. I have no idea. I'm ready. So from either side, we are doing something together with the Russians. We call it lunar resource. We have also a moon project, but my idea is to have it open architecture and not I don't want to decide who comes first and second and so on.

This is the past. So do we have a question from the Internet? I think so far. OK, then, please, a microphone number three.

Hi. Do we also work together with India and China? Of course. You see, the beauty of ESA is we have 22 member states plus Canada, plus Slovenia, as I'm always quoting and saying and saying.

And therefore, we have no problem at all to cooperate with with different members, with different states around the world. And I think it's necessary. Don't forget about values. Don't forget about forget about things you don't think are really good. But cooperation is a must for for citizens on Earth. So I'm I'm therefore I say just, of course.

So we don't have any more time for questions now. But I have told us that he's available if you have any questions to him for some more minutes, at least. So.

Yeah, I thank you, if you allow me. It was really great to be here. It was the first time I think that I was invited. It was a great honor for me. And if you like, I come again. OK.