Albania is about to join a growing club of nations that have agreed to a shared code of conduct for exploring space. NASA says the Republic of Albania will sign the Artemis Accords at a ceremony at NASA Headquarters in Washington at 12 p.m. EDT on Monday 21 September, making it the 73rd signatory.
NASA Deputy Administrator Matt Anderson will host the ceremony, together with officials from the US State Department. Albania will be represented by its Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, Ferit Hoxha, and its Ambassador to the United States, Ervin Bushati. The event is open to media in person only.
What are the Artemis Accords?
The Artemis Accords were established in 2020, during the first Trump administration, when the United States, led by NASA and the State Department, joined seven other founding nations. They were a response to growing interest in activity on and around the Moon by both governments and private companies.
NASA describes them as the first set of practical principles aimed at improving the safety, transparency and coordination of civil space exploration on the Moon, Mars and beyond. They build on the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and other existing agreements, including the Registration Convention and the Rescue and Return Agreement, rather than replacing them.
What signatories promise
- Peaceful purposes. Cooperative activities should be exclusively for peaceful purposes, in line with the Outer Space Treaty.
- Transparency. Signatories commit to publicly sharing their national space policies and exploration plans.
- Interoperability. They agree to use reasonable efforts to follow current technical standards, and to develop new ones when needed, so that different countries’ systems can work together.
- Emergency assistance. They commit to taking all reasonable efforts to help astronauts in distress.
- Registration. Space objects should be properly registered, which helps countries coordinate and avoid harmful interference with one another’s activities.
- Further principles cover sharing scientific data, preserving heritage sites, the use of space resources, avoiding harmful interference, and limiting orbital debris.
Why it matters beyond the headline number
The Accords are a political framework rather than a treaty, so they are not enforced by a court or an international body. Their strength comes from the number of countries that follow the same rules, and from the fact that rules agreed early are easier to apply than rules argued about after a dispute. Each new signature extends that shared understanding to another country.
For a country like Albania, which does not have its own crewed space programme, signing is primarily a signal that it wants to take part in international space cooperation and to align with the principles the group follows. Signatories range from established space powers to countries that are only beginning to develop space activities.
The bigger picture
Space is getting busier. More countries are launching satellites, more companies are planning lunar missions, and more agreements are being signed about how to behave there. NASA’s Artemis programme and the Accords are one framework among several, and not every space power has signed. The count on Monday, 73, shows how quickly the group has grown since 2020, when there were only eight founders.
