The Artemis Accords and Subsequent Developments

NASA announced the formation of the Artemis Accords in 2020 with eight foundation partners: Australia, Canada, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States. As of August 2023, this number has grown to 28. The Artemis Accords provide a blueprint for engagement by these countries on a bilateral basis with NASA on projects which involve the creation of a Lunar Gateway, the return of humans to the Moon and, ultimately, on to Mars. The first Artemis launch occurred in 2022. The content of the Artemis Accords to which a partner agency must agree are expressed to ‘reinforce and implement the Outer Space Treaty, the Registration Convention, the Agreement on the Rescue and Return of Astronauts’ and ‘other norms of behaviour that NASA and its partners have supported’. However, some of the Artemis principles extend beyond these fundamentals of space law to embrace concepts such as safety zones, resource extraction and use and interoperability. These provisions provide challenges to which evolving international space law must respond. This chapter examines the process and provisions of the US-led Artemis Accords, looking at the content and operation of the individual principles contained therein. It also considers whether the Artemis principles represent a unilateral challenge to existing international space law and concludes that, whilst activities undertaken pursuant to the Artemis projects will inevitably create new norms and behaviours, and, in time, laws, the Artemis principles reflect an evolution which will be necessary as humans expand their activities beyond Earth.