Emmanuel Macron visited NASA and said that his country continues to cooperate with the United States in the field of space exploration. It also became known that France will abandon the development of anti-satellite weapons and will make efforts to make this ban global.
Macron and NASA
French President Emmanuel Macron is on an official visit to the United States. Today, he, along with US Vice President Kamala Harris and European astronaut Thomas Pesquet visited NASA headquarters.
During the visit, both sides stressed that they have been allies in space exploration for 60 years. And they plan to continue cooperation in several directions at once. First of all, this concerns the Artemis program, which first unmanned mission is currently in space.
In June of this year, France joined the “Artemis accords”, which are a kind of international component of the Artemis program. They assume exclusively peaceful cooperation in the exploration of the Moon. On Wednesday, Emmanuel Macron confirmed that France was extremely interested in implementing these principles.
Joint scientific research
The two countries also attach great importance to cooperation in deep space exploration. In particular, the James Webb Space Telescope project, which began operating this year, is extremely important.
In addition, the French President highlighted the joint efforts of the two countries in monitoring climate change from orbit. The most important mission of the near future should be SWOT, which is scheduled to start on December 12. This satellite should monitor the topography of water reservoirs, including oceans, rivers and lakes.
France will abandon anti-satellite weapons
The most important news related to the US-French relations came to that. On Tuesday, France signed a commitment to abandon anti-satellite missile weapons. The country has not tested it, but it has the technical capabilities to create it.
Anti-satellite missiles are dangerous because the debris formed after their use can hit the civilian orbital infrastructure. Therefore, back in the spring, the United States refused to use it, and is now looking for international support to ban it completely.
But so far, such steps have been supported only by the closest allies of the United States or countries that have no special prospects for development. France’s support of the initiative means a chance to make this rule mandatory for everyone, despite the resistance of China and Russia.
According to phys.org
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