Mauritius signs Artemis Accords
On the same day Serbia officially signed the Artemis Accords, the island nation of Mauritius (located in the Indian Ocean) also joined, becoming the 70th nation within this American space alliance.
Serbia’s decision to join had been announced earlier this week, with the official signing today.
As Mauritius lies about thousand miles east of Africa, we could say it is part of that continent, thus raising the number of nations in that continent to have signed the accords to seven. Angola, Botswana, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Senegal are the others. For a variety of reasons, not many African nations have signed on.
The full list of nations in this American space alliance is as follows:
Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Botswana, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.
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The Artemis Accords parade continues. At recent rates of accession, the roster of signatories might well be at or near 100 by the time the US actually returns to the Moon two or three years hence.
It will be interesting to see whether any other future signers-on will, like Serbia, be “double-dippers” who are also signatories to the PRC’s International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) initiative. The likeliest such I would judge to be Thailand, though I can’t discount Venezuela either – now that it’s being run by Marco Rubio. Kazakhstan is also a possibility, though probably not until after Russia has decisively lost its misbegotten war with Ukraine.
Africa, I suspect, will continue to lag as it does in most things – ghastly diseases and psychopathic violence being notable exceptions. Given that Madagascar’s geography is well-suited to the siting of potential spaceports, I would not be surprised if it is among the likely-few additional Artemis signatories to be had in and around Africa. The rest of that benighted continent I expect to continue going merrily to Hades in its immemorial way.
The Western Hemisphere is already pretty well wrapped up with the only South American holdouts being Bolivia, Venezuela, Guyana and Suriname. The remaining unaffiliated nations of Central America will likely come around eventually, save perhaps Nicaragua. In the Caribbean, I would expect to see more accessions as well, though probably not Haiti. Cuba, once the current regime is put paid to, is another likely possibility. Additional accessions among the Pacific Island nations and Southeast Asia also seem likely.
These predictions may well take as long as an additional decade to play out, but it would also not surprise me if there is a sudden rush when US boots are once again treading lunar regolith.
The importance of this alliance’s wide reach is that it gives the U.S. the ability to dictate legal policy. In the end it will determine the property rights in space, not the Outer Space Treaty, which will be ignored.
The rate of sign ups reminds me of the Stooges immortal ‘Niagara Falls’ skit……’Slowly I turned, step by step, inch by inch’
Those of classical bent might also be reminded to the administration of Justice by the Furies in Greek tragedies – slow but inexorable
It may take a while but we’ll get there!
Sao Tome is interesting to me in that it is near both zero degrees latitude and longitude….the hump of Africa above and to its west so as to protect it from tropical systems.