Senegal has formally joined the Artemis Accords, turning into the 56th nation and the fourth African nation to decide to a shared imaginative and prescient for peaceable and clear house exploration.
The signing ceremony was held at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. on Thursday (July 24), the place Maram Kairé, Director-Normal of the Senegalese House Research Company (ASES), signed the Artemis Accords alongside Senegal’s Ambassador to america, Abdoul Wahab Haidara. NASA Chief of Workers Brian Hughes and State Division official Jonathan Pratt represented the U.S.
“Following a gathering between Senegal President Faye and President Trump, at the moment, NASA constructed upon the sturdy relations between our two nations because the Senegalese Company for House Research signed the Artemis Accords,” Sean Duffy, performing NASA Administrator, mentioned in a statement from the house company. “With Senegal because the 56th signatory, I’m proud to additional President Trump’s sturdy legacy of worldwide cooperation in house.”
The Artemis Accords, established in October 2020 by america and 7 different founding nations, set guiding rules to control civil house exercise, emphasizing peaceable use, transparency and preservation of lunar sources. They align with the tenets of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and are designed to help NASA’s Artemis program, which goals to return people to the moon by 2026 and put together for future crewed missions to Mars.
Senegal is the banking African nation to signal, following Angola in 2023 and Nigeria and Rwanda in 2022. Although Senegal’s house program continues to be in its early phases, having fashioned in 2023, the nation launched its first nanosatellite, Gaindesat-1A, in 2024 to assist in agricultural planning and environmental monitoring.
“Senegal’s adherence to the Artemis Accords displays our dedication to a multilateral, accountable, and clear method to house,” Kairé mentioned within the assertion. “This signature marks a significant step in our house diplomacy and in our ambition to contribute to the peaceable exploration of outer house.”
Senegal has been steadily increasing its involvement in house science, together with supporting NASA missions via ground-based observations of asteroid and planetary occultations. In 2021, NASA partnered with Kairé and native scientists to trace asteroid Orus because it handed in entrance of a star, serving to estimate its dimension and form forward of the Lucy spacecraft’s deliberate flyby in 2028.
The rising checklist of Artemis Accords signatories underscores rising international consensus on the necessity for accountable and collaborative exploration beyond Earth, in addition to guaranteeing that the way forward for house advantages all of humanity.