Abstract

One of the projects shooting for the Moon attracting the most attention no doubt concerns the Artemis project. Hereby, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) plans to land the first woman and the next man on the Moon, and has meanwhile agreed with other countries on the Artemis Accords with regard to the activities that are to be undertaken on the Moon. While the space agencies assure that the Accords are perfectly in compliance with current international (space) law, some criticism has been levelled against those plans and the Accords disputing that straightforward claim. To assess the validity of such concerns, the paper thus analyses and scrutinizes the thirteen sections of the Accords from the perspective of international law, and in particular its cornerstone principle on international cooperation.