[CharlesXY]

Honestly, pleasantly surprised that this is a European-led initiative, it’s really great to see ESA stepping up with such an ambitious project.

[saubeidl]

ESA is leading the way in a bunch of space stuff - we're not great at launchers, but the stuff we send up is top-notch.

There's Euclid, which maps out the visible sky in insane detail [0]

There's Galileo, which provides much higher accuracy than GPS. (20cm vs 5m!)

And then there's Copernicus, which provides open-access Earth Observation as a public good.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86ZCsUfgLRQ

[snickerbockers]

>There's Galileo, which provides much higher accuracy than GPS. (20cm vs 5m!)

Very ironic name for a group of satellites orbiting the earth.

[sandworm101]

Mostly European. The ESA map has a little cutout for the one non-european "cooperator" state on the council.

https://www.esa.int/About_Us/Corporate_news/Member_States_Co...

[ChocolateGod]

Canada is currently pretending to be a European country sssh

[saubeidl]

We'll annex them before the Americans do!

[preisschild]

For Canada we can rename the EU to just "the Union" or even "The United States" :)

[JLemay]

I mean it sounds great for materials extraction, but I’m a bit skeptical on infrastructure that will make long-term exploration and a lunar economy actually viable