Washington, May 11 (EFE).- Spain has decided to join the Artemis program, which was 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 told EFE the news just before the US President, Joe Biden, and the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, meet tomorrow, Friday, in the Oval Office of the White House.
According to that source, the two leaders plan to talk about the Spanish government’s decision to join the Artemis Accords and about how to strengthen cooperation between Spain and the United States in space.
In May 2021, the Spanish Government announced the creation of the Spanish Space Agency, based in Seville and whose mission is to coordinate all of Spain’s actions in space, as well as to serve as an interlocutor with the rest of the world’s space agencies, such as NASA of the United States and the European Space Agency (ESA).
The United States began to formally promote the Artemis program in 2017, under the Presidency of Donald Trump (2017-2021).
The Apollo program was taken as a model, developed within the framework 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 in a peaceful and transparent manner.
The long-term goal of the program is to establish a permanent base on the moon that will facilitate missions with humans on board to Mars.
With Spain, 25 countries are already part of the Artemis program and, as signatories to that agreement, they commit to a peaceful exploration of space and to share their scientific discoveries, as well as to favor the creation of “safe zones” in which each nation can conduct operations on the surface of the Moon without interference from others.
Apart from Spain and the United States, the members of the Artemisa program are: Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, the Czech Republic, France, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, South Korea, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom.
