WASHINGTON — Norway signed the Artemis Accords May 15, a sign that the new administration continues to advance the document outlining best practices for responsible space exploration.
Cecilie Myrseth, Norway’s minister for trade and industry, signed the Accords during an event at the headquarters of the Norwegian Space Agency in Oslo, attended by the head of the agency as well as the chargé d’affaires of the U.S. embassy there.
“This is an important step for enabling Norway to contribute to broader international cooperation to ensure the peaceful exploration and use of outer space,” Myrseth said in a statement.
Norway is the 55th country to sign the Accords since 2020. The document outlines best practices based on principles in the Outer Space Treaty and other agreements on issues such as transparency, sharing of scientific data and utilization of space resources.
Norway is also the third country to sign the Artemis Accords since the start of the new Trump administration, after Finland in January and Bangladesh April 8. All three countries signed in events in their own countries with little or no NASA presence, in contrast to the Biden administration, when NASA Headquarters hosted many signing events.
While countries are joining at a slower rate this year — nine countries joined through the first five months of 2024 — the fact that countries are continuing to sign indicates that the new administration is maintaining its support the Accords, which started in the first Trump administration.
“We’re grateful for the strong and meaningful collaboration we’ve already had with the Norwegian Space Agency,” Janet Petro, NASA’s acting administrator, said in a statement. “Now, by signing the Artemis Accords, Norway is not only supporting the future of exploration, but also helping us define it with all our partners for the moon, Mars and beyond.”
The addition of new Artemis Accords signatories comes as more concrete examples of international cooperation in space exploration that are part of Artemis are threatened with cancellation in the White House’s fiscal year 2026 budget proposal. That includes the Gateway, where Europe, Canada, Japan and the United Arab Emirates are all providing elements, as well as the European-built service module for Orion, a spacecraft the budget proposes to phase out after Artemis 3.
Gateway “is one of the critical elements of international partnership,” Alex MacDonald, former NASA chief economist, said during a May 14 webinar by the Center for Strategic and International Studies on the NASA budget proposal. “There’s always a lot of discussion about the Artemis Accords. The Artemis Accords don’t actually include you in the program in a material way, but the agreements for Gateway did.”
Should Congress agree with the administration’s proposal to cancel Gateway, he said, “one of the immediate questions then is, how are the international partners going to be part of Artemis? Will they still be?” That might, he suggested, involve repurposing elements of the Gateway those countries are providing for other applications.
