Artemis Accords

On 5 May 2020, Reuters reported that the Trump administration was drafting a new international agreement outlining the laws for mining on the Moon grounded on the peaceful purposes grounded in the Outer Space Treaty of 1967.[1][2] NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine officially announced the Artemis Accords on 15 May will be a series of a bilateral agreements between the nation states in the Artemis program.[3][1]

The Accords were signed by the directors of the national space agencies of the United States, Australia, Canada, Japan, Luxembourg, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates on October 13, 2020.[4] Ukraine became the ninth signatory of the accords on November 13, 2020.[5] On December 14, 2020, Brazil signed a Statement of Intent.[6]

The stated purpose of the Artemis Accords is to "provide for operational implementation of important obligations contained in the Outer Space Treaty and other instruments." It is put into effect by a series of bilateral agreements between the signatory parties. The provisions:[7]

• Affirm that cooperative activities under these Accords should be exclusively for peaceful purposes and in accordance with relevant international law.
• Confirm a commitment to transparency and to share scientific information, consistent with Article XI of the Outer Space Treaty.
• Call for a commitment to use reasonable efforts to utilize current interoperability standards for space-based infrastructure, and to establish standards when they do not exist or are inadequate.
• Call for a commitment to take all reasonable efforts to render necessary assistance to personnel in outer space who are in distress and according to their obligations under the Rescue and Return Agreement.
• Specify responsibility for the registration of objects in space, as required by the Registration Convention
• Call for a commitment to publicly share information on their activities and to the open sharing of scientific data. While doing so, signatories agree to coordinate with each other to provide appropriate protection for any proprietary and/or export-controlled information, and this provision does not extend to private sector operations unless conducted on behalf of a signatory.
• Include an agreement to preserve outer space heritage, which they consider to comprise historically significant human or robotic landing sites, artifacts, spacecraft, and other evidence of activity, and to contribute to multinational efforts to develop practices and rules to do so.
• Include an agreement that extraction and utilization of space resources should be conducted in a manner that complies with the Outer Space Treaty and in support of safe and sustainable activities. The signatories affirm that this does not inherently constitute national appropriation, which is prohibited by the Outer Space Treaty. They also express an intent to contribute to multilateral efforts to further develop international practices and rules on this subject.
• Reaffirm the signatories commitment to the Outer Space Treaty's provisions relating to due regard and harmful interference with other nations activities, and to provide information regarding the location and nature of space-based activities. Signatories express an intention to contribute to multilateral efforts to further develop international practices, criteria, and rules to assure this. To implement this, the Accords provide for the announcement of "safety zones", where other operations or an anomalous event could reasonably cause harmful interference. The size and scope of these safe zones should be based on the nature and environment of the operations involved and determined in a reasonable manner leveraging commonly accepted scientific and engineering principles. Within their safety zones, the signatories commit to respect the principle of free access to all areas of celestial bodies by others and all other provisions of the Outer Space Treaty.
• Include a commitment to mitigate space debris and to limit the generation of new, harmful space debris in the normal operations, break-up in operational or post-mission phases, and accidents.

Russia has condemned the Artemis Accords as a blatant attempt to create international space law that favors the United States.[8] Two researchers writing in Science magazine's Policy Forum have called on countries to speak up about their objections, and that the United States should go through the United Nations treaty process in order to negotiate on space mining. They were concerned NASA's bilateral agreements, if accepted by many nations, would enable the Accords' interpretation of the Outer Space Treaty to prevail and make the United States—as the licensing nation for most of commercial space companies—the de facto gatekeeper to the Moon and other bodies in the solar system.[8] The United States has made acceptance of the Artemis Accords a prerequisite for participation in NASA's Artemis lunar program.[8]

"The Outer Space Treaty forbids nations from staking claim to another planetary body, but the policy of the US is that countries and companies can own the materials they extract from other worlds."[9] Frans von der Dunk from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln claims that the accords strengthen "the US interpretation of the Outer Space Treaty". This interpretation acknowledges "the basic right for individual States to allow the private sector to become engaged" in commercial activities. The weakened alternative interpretation is that "unilateral approval of commercial exploitation is not in compliance with the Outer Space Treaty, and that only an international regime, notably—presumably—including an international licencing system, could legitimise such commercial exploitation."[10][11]

• Politics of outer space
• Space law
• Moon Treaty

• The Artemis Accords at NASA