International astronauts will join U.S. astronauts on the moon by the end of this decade under an agreement announced Wednesday by NASA and the White House.
The news came as Vice President Kamala Harris convened a meeting of the National Space Council in Washington, the third such meeting under the Biden administration.
There was no word on who the international moonwalker would be or what country he would represent. A NASA spokesperson later said the crew will be assigned to a location close to the lunar landing mission, and no commitments to other countries have been made yet.
NASA has been sending international astronauts on space trips for decades. Canadian Jeremy Hansen About a year from now, it will fly around the moon with three American astronauts.
Another crew member will actually land. This will be the first landing by astronauts on the moon in more than half a century. According to , it is unlikely to happen before 2027. U.S. Government Accountability Office.
All 12 moon walkers on NASA’s Apollo program in the 1960s and 1970s were U.S. citizens. The space agency’s new moon exploration program is named Artemis, after the mythical twin sister of Apollo.
Including international partners is “not only deeply appreciated, but also urgently needed in today’s world,” Hansen told the board.
NASA has long emphasized the need for global cooperation in space, and in 2020 established the Artemis Accords with the U.S. Department of State to promote responsible behavior not only on the moon but everywhere in space. Representatives from all 33 countries that have signed the agreement so far are expected to attend the Space Council meeting in Washington.
“We know from experience that cooperation in space pays off,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, citing the Webb Space Telescope, an effort between the United States, Europe and Canada, as an example.
Notably absent from the Artemis Accords are Russia and China, the only countries other than the United States that have sent their citizens into orbit. Russia is her NASA partner on the International Space Station, along with Europe, Japan and Canada. Even in the early 1990s, the Russian and U.S. space agencies collaborated on a shuttle program to launch each other’s astronauts to Russia’s former orbiting Mir base.
At Wednesday’s meeting, Harris also announced new policies to ensure the safe use of space as more private companies and nations take to the skies. The problems the United States is trying to solve include the climate crisis and the growing amount of space junk on Earth. Russia’s anti-satellite missile tests in 2021 added more than 1,500 pieces of potentially dangerous orbital debris, prompting Blinken to join other meetings and urge all countries to conduct such destructive tests. I asked them to cancel it.
Source: www.nbcnews.com
