I’ve been reading more about NASA’s Artemis program, and specifically taking a look at the Artemis Accords of 2020, a “shared vision for principles, grounded in the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, to create a safe and transparent environment which facilitates exploration, science, and commercial activities for all of humanity to enjoy.”
In comparing these documents, I find the emphasis in the Artemis Accords on information transparency and the sharing of scientific data, and the addition of a mandate for “interoperable and common exploration infrastructure and standards,” to be interesting, positive byproducts of the techno-global era in which we live. However, while the focus in the Outer Space Treaty is on state responsibility and liability, the Artemis Accords emphasize “commercial activities” in the introduction, and later plainly acknowledge the “extraction and utilization of space resources.” Another byproduct of the present era, but a more concerning one.
I got set up on Codeberg today, and will be slowly migrating my repositories over there from GitHub. The first, though, is a new /journal repository, which I will be using as a source for materials referenced in journal entries here, including the two treaty documents discussed today.