Spain has decided to join the Artemis program, promoted by the United States to establish the rules that will eventually regulate a permanent presence on the Moon and the exploration of other celestial bodies such as Mars.
A senior US official broke the news to EFE shortly before the meeting between the President of the United States, Joe Biden, and the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, this Friday, in the Oval Office of the White House.
According to that source, the two leaders intend to talk about the Spanish government’s decision to join the Artemis Agreements and on how to strengthen cooperation between Spain and the United States in space.
Artemis Agreements are established by the US government with others around the world who want to participate in the Artemis program.
After the successful unmanned Artemis I mission around the moon, NASA’s plans now are to send the second with crew in 2024, during which it would make a similar trip, and the following year, in 2025, Artemis III, in which astronauts, including the first woman and person of color, finally set foot on lunar soil.
Cooperation in Europe and with the US
In May 2021, the Spanish Government announced the creation of the Spanish Space Agency, based in Seville and whose mission is to coordinate all Spanish actions in space, as well as serve as an interlocutor with the other space agencies in the world, such as NASA of the United States and the European Space Agency (ESA).
The Artemis program seeks to create a legal framework for space exploration
The United States began formally promoting the Artemis program in 2017, under the presidency of Donald Trump (2017-2021).
The Apollo program was taken as a model, developed as part of the space race against the Soviet Union and which, in 1969, allowed man to land on the moon.
More than half a century later, the Artemis program seeks to create a legal framework for space exploration and establishes that governments and private companies that want to use lunar soil resources for commercial purposes must do so peacefully and transparently.
Illustration of the Starship spacecraft manned landing system. /SpaceX
A permanent base on the moon
The long-term goal of the program is to establish a permanent base on the moon that will facilitate human-on-board missions to Mars.
With Spain, 25 countries are already part of the Artemisa program and, as signatories to that agreement, they are committed to peacefully exploring space and sharing their scientific discoveries, as well as favoring the creation of “safe zones” in which each nation can conduct operations on the surface of the Moon without interference from others.
In addition to Spain and the United States, the members of the Artemisa program are: Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Czech Republic, France, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, South Korea, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates and United Kingdom.