Artemis Agreements: France will go to the Moon with the Americans

France has just signed the Artemis agreements, This declaration in 13 paragraphs, drafted by the United States, enacts the “Principles of cooperation for the exploitation and use for peaceful purposes of the Moon, Mars, comets and asteroids”. In particular, it reaffirms the importance of respecting the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, well known for its great universalist principles, which establishes in particular that the Moon and other celestial bodies cannot be appropriated, in whole or in part, and that their exploitation can only be done for the benefit of humanity as a whole.

To draw a parallel with international waters, which are also no matter what in the sense that they do not belong to anyone, a literal interpretation of the 1967 text implies that it is impossible to appropriate a fishing or drilling area outside territorial waters, but that nothing prevents engage in these activities. However, all the fish and all the oil found would be a common good of humanity and should therefore be distributed among all.

No to appropriation, yes to exploitation

The application of these main principles comes up against the wall of practical realities, with semantic questions of which the legal debate has the secret: who represents humanity and how to define a benefit? In November 2015, Washington gave the first stroke of the penknife in the 1967 treaty with its own interpretation: the United States does not appropriate any space territory, but American companies will be able to market the resources that they manage to extract from it. Luxembourg, sensing the vein, hastened to adopt similar legislation and to become the European hub for research into the commercial exploitation of asteroids.

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In October 2020, with the acceleration of the Artemis program for the resumption of lunar landings and a human and robotic presence on the surface of the Moon, the United States is going further with the Artemis agreements. All the main principles of 1967 are confirmed there: protection of space, transparency on activities, international coordination, sharing of scientific discoveries (except those made by the private sector), non-appropriation of sites, etc.

The establishment of “safety zones”

But two notions are introduced: heritage protection and the need to avoid harmful interference. Thus, it is necessary to avoid destroying historical sites of past exploration, such as those of the Apollo moon landings; but also, when a team installs scientific equipment, it is necessary to prevent another from disturbing the measurements by setting up nearby. There will therefore be exclusion zones and “safety zones”, comparable to the exclusive economic zones (EEZ) of maritime nations which encroach very widely on international waters.

The definition of needs and distances will be negotiated on a case-by-case basis, but the worm is in the fruit: whoever first sets up a permanent scientific installation at the lunar South Pole, where the water reserves are concentrated, will be able to ask that the others not come too close, and therefore cannot benefit from this coveted resource.

From their formulation, the Artemis agreements were signed by Luxembourg, Italy and the United Kingdom, but also by Canada, Japan, the United Arab Emirates and Australia. Eleven other countries have since followed, including Ukraine, South Korea, Brazil and Israel. Russia and China have announced that they will not sign. Moscow denounces the creation of a system favorable to the United States alone, and China compares the agreements to the unequal treaties imposed on it by the colonial powers in the 19th century. Vice President Mike Pence’s speech to the Astronautical Congress in Washington in October 2019, which expanded the “manifest destiny” of US colonization of the West to the dimensions of the solar system, gives them arguments.

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Initially critical, for these same reasons, France is today the 20th signatory – before Germany – and evokes “the development of an international legal regime within the framework of inclusive multilateralism”, as well as the benefit for French companies invested in the Artemis program. In times of geopolitical polarization, it would have been inappropriate to do otherwise.