In a written statement made by the US Department of State, “Harm van de Wetering, Director of the Netherlands Space Agency (NSO), signed the agreement on behalf of the Kingdom of the Netherlands at a ceremony hosted by Dutch Ambassador to Washington Birgitta Tazelaar.”
In the ministry statement, it was noted that the Netherlands is the 31st country to sign the Artemis Agreement.
US Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) officials Bill Nelson, Pam Melroy and National Space Council Secretary General Chirag Parikh also attended the signing ceremony, the statement said.
Artemis Agreement
Based on the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, the Artemis Treaty is known as “a multilateral, non-binding declaration of principles and rules to improve the governance of responsible exploration of outer space”.
The principles of the Artemis Treaty include registration of space objects, prevention of overlapping activities, sharing of scientific data and provision of emergency assistance.
Within the framework of the same agreement, the US envisages the establishment of a permanent base on the Moon and the use of the Moon as a stopover for the journey to Mars, as well as the extraction of valuable minerals there.
The agreement was first officially on the agenda on May 5, 2020.
On May 16, 2020, NASA announced that it had signed bilateral agreements with many countries for the Artemis project.
According to the US State Department, signatories to the Artemis Agreement include Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Israel, Italy, Japan, Japan, South Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, Romania, Singapore, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom, in addition to the United States and France.
