Issued on: 08/06/2022 – 04:25
France is poised to sign a US-led multilateral agreement aimed at governing how countries behave in space and on the moon, according to two people familiar with the plans.
The signing of the pact by France, called the Artemis Accords, will mark one of the most significant endorsements to date of Washington’s effort to shape international rules and legal standards for exploring the lunar surface, sources said. they asked not to be identified.
A spokeswoman for the French space agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A NASA spokeswoman, who led the drafting of the Artemis agreements, did not return any emails asking for comments.
French officials on Tuesday night will sign the agreements during a celebration at the French ambassador’s residence in Washington, DC, of the French space agency’s 60th anniversary, one source said.
The country will become the 20th to sign the pact from 2020, when it was conceived by the Trump administration as a diplomatic hub for NASA’s flagship space exploration program, Artemis. This program aims to return humans to the surface of the Moon in 2025 with the help of US allies and private companies.
The agreements, based mainly on broader principles of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, include a series of principles designed to promote peaceful uses of space, from establishing “security zones” around future bases of the Outer Space Treaty. moon to share scientific data with other countries.
The United Kingdom, Japan and Canada are other key countries that have previously signed the agreements, with France becoming the seventh European state. The most recent signatory, last month, was Colombia, one of the few signatories that sees the agreements as an impetus to develop its own space capabilities.
China, which is not a signatory to the Artemis agreements, is planning its own moon exploration program that NASA chief Bill Nelson and other U.S. officials see as a rival to the Artemis program. Russia, a partner of the US space agency on the International Space Station, plans to work with Beijing on its lunar program instead of the Artemis program.
(REUTERS)