Armenia signed the Agreements with the United States on Wednesday, June 12, during an event at NASA Headquarters in Washington, in the presence of Armenian Minister of Industry Mkhitar Hayrapetyan, Armenia’s Ambassador to the United States Lilit Makunts and by Jennifer R. Littlejohn, Acting Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs.
With this signature, Armenia became the 43rd country to have signed the Artemis Accordsconfirming how this collaboration is increasingly becoming the largest international negotiation ever organized in the space sector.
One of the peculiarities of this new Artemis collaboration is that the countries signatory to the Agreements are on five continents and represent a great extension to a “simple” Western collaboration such as the International Space Station, for example.
In this map we have collected all the countries that have currently signed the Artemis Agreements, and we can see the great geographical spread.
The 10 Artemis Agreements
The Artemis Accords are a set of 10 principles that seek to expand the international law concepts of the Outer Space Agreement that have been in place since 1967. They are not binding principles under international law, but signatory countries agree to abide by them. Furthermore, the big difference is that this commitment is made with the USA and not with an international body external to governments.
Once again, as is already done with each new signature, NASA has confirmed that additional countries will be added to this list in the coming months. Let us also remember that states sign the Artemis Agreements generally to obtain something in return, be it an industrial agreement or a scientific collaboration.
The USA itself requires this signature as a minimum condition for the drafting of agreements and collaborations relating to new lunar exploration. In this video we have collected and explained how the Artemis Agreements work and each of the 10 principles:
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