Ukraine’s National Space Agency has signed an agreement to join the NASA-led space exploration and colonization project Artemis, becoming the ninth nation to join the international endeavor to get humans back to the Moon by 2024.
By signing up, Ukraine agreed to respect the program’s strictly peaceful nature. Additionally, the Artemis activities must be carried out in a transparent way, and all participants are obliged to seek full interoperability of their technologies, to share newly-gained scientific data, and to render all available assistance in case of emergencies, the Ukrainian Space Agency said early on Nov. 13.
Joining the $35-billion, U.S.-led and -funded program was among the top priorities for the Ukrainian Space Agency’s director, Volodymyr Usov.
In an interview with the Kyiv Post in April, he said that Ukrainian engineers at the Dnipro-based Pivdenne design bureau were ready to introduce a lunar industrial base project as well as numerous technological solutions for lunar orbital stations and transport communications between the Moon’s surface, orbital stations, and the Earth.
In August, the Ukrainian Space Agency also joined the Moon Village, an international project to popularize lunar exploration and colonization.
“This is important for Ukraine,” Usov was quoted as saying on Nov. 13. “Because we will be able to get our own projects running in cooperation with the world’s top space agencies… Ukrainian projects have already become part of a global plan of Moon colonization by the International Space Exploration Coordination Group (a NASA-led forum of over 20 national space agencies).”
“And in a logical way, we want to continue exercising our scientific potential as part of the Artemis project.”
The Artemis program was launched in 2017 with the ultimate goal of completing a piloted landing on the Moon’s south pole region. If successful, the project would bring astronauts to the Earth’s natural satellite for the first time since the completion of the Apollo program in 1972.
In the longer run, the project is expected to establish the first constant habitable base on the Moon, which could be a launchpad for piloted spaceflights to Mars.
