Two months after the executive order in which it confirmed its interest in the use of the Moon and, more generally, of all celestial bodies, including asteroids, for economic and industrial purposes, the American government published guidelines for the space exploration. The Artemis Accords document is presented and partially summarized ...
Two months after the executive order in which it confirmed its interest in the use of the Moon and, more generally, of all celestial bodies, including asteroids, for economic and industrial purposes, the American government published guidelines for the space exploration. The Artemis Accords document is presented and partially summarized on the NASA website, which headlines the page "principles for a safe, peaceful and prosperous future": little is known about the actual rules, which, when they will be signed by private space companies American and space agencies that want to participate in the Artemis program for the colonization of the Moon, will be, in the intentions of the Trump administration, the first foundation stone of a new set of rules that will bind those who want to go to the cosmos.
The Artemis agreements seem to stem from the desire to regulate the race towards the new frontier and the exploitation of its resources, which, at least as an image, recalls the feverish times of the gold rush through the "wild west", in the mid-nineteenth century. This is because if until a few years ago the only ones to go to the stars were the astronauts of NASA, ESA and the Russian or Chinese space agencies, today more and more private companies are on the field, starting with SpaceX, which by force of things operate with different logic than government bodies.
The Artemis Accords give the impression of being a cumbersome and binding American annotation to the Treaty on Extra Atmospheric Space (1967), which in turn had already been enriched by a Treaty on the Moon (1979). These two documents were born from the work of the United Nations Commission on the peaceful use of the extra-atmospheric space, in which 74 countries participate - not a single actor, however important - and which, since 1958, meets once a year .
Artemis reaffirms the spirit of the various treaties created by the work of the UN commission, and it could not be otherwise, but above all it aims to impose technologies and standards on anyone who wants to participate in the banquet, private and government bodies, thus operating in blatant contradiction with the rules that tend to limit or regulate "prevailing positions"
The US government reaches out to science and, in its Artemis Accords, plans to share all the data collected in the Cosmos; in addition, in order not to betray the memory of the past, the aim is to protect spatial areas of high historical value, such as the sites of the first moon landings of the 1960s and, of course, " The first impression".
We hope to be able to participate as soon as possible in this international adventure that will write new pages of history. Asgardiani, forward with our ideas and projects.