The Artemis Accords represent a political commitment to a set of practical principles. (file)
New Delhi:
One of the “most substantive” results of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first state visit to the US concerns new frontiers in space, as highlighted by both the White House and India’s foreign minister.
India has signed the Artemis Accords, a US-led effort to send humans back to the moon by 2025, with the ultimate goal of expanding space exploration to Mars and beyond.
“India joins 26 other countries in their commitment to peaceful, sustainable and transparent cooperation that will enable exploration of the Moon, Mars and beyond. NASA will provide advanced training to astronauts from the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) with the aim of aim to launch a joint effort to the International Space Station in 2024,” said a statement from the White House.
The purpose of these accords, which are not legally binding instruments, is to establish a common vision through a practical set of principles, guidelines and best practices to improve the governance of civilian exploration and use of space with the intent to promote the Artemis program. These apply to civilian space activities – which can take place on the Moon, Mars, comets, asteroids, including their surfaces and subsurfaces, as well as orbiting the Moon or Mars, in the “lagrangian points” for the Earth-Moon system, and en route between these celestial bodies and locations — conducted by each signatory’s civilian space agencies.
This is intended to increase the security of operations, reduce uncertainty, and promote the sustainable and beneficial use of space for all of humanity. The accords represent a political commitment to the Principles, many of which provide for the operational implementation of important commitments in space.
The main principles state that all activities will be conducted for peaceful purposes, partners will uphold the principle of transparency by publicly describing policies and plans, and use open international standards, develop new standards when necessary, and strive to support interoperability. It also asks partners to commit to taking all reasonable steps to provide assistance to astronauts in distress, commit to determining which of them should register a relevant space object in accordance with the Registration Convention, and make their scientific data publicly available. to ensure that the entire world can benefit from the Artemis journey.
It also states that partner countries will commit to protecting sites and artifacts of historical value. In addition, it emphasizes that space is not subject to national appropriation, that states have international responsibility for space activities, that states must inform the UN about their space activities, and that partner countries will provide public information on the location and general nature of operations that will inform the scale and scope of ‘Security Zones’.
To avoid harmful interference, partner countries must act in a manner consistent with the principles reflected in the Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UNCOPUOS).
26 countries have collaborated in the Artemis Accord, with Australia, Canada, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the UAE, the UK and the US as founding members.
Of the 22 European countries, only eight – Luxembourg, Italy, the UK, Romania, Poland, France, the Czech Republic and Spain – have signed the accords.
New partners are African countries such as Rwanda and Nigeria.
NASA and ISRO will develop a strategic framework for cooperation in human spaceflight by the end of 2023. India has approved a $318 million investment to build a Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory in India, which will partner with similar facilities in the United States. , Europe and Japan to search for ripples in space-time, known as gravitational waves, that provide insight into the physical origins of the universe, the White House statement said.
