Spain will be in Artemis: Biden allows Sánchez to join the project to go to the Moon

The President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, visited the White House this Friday, where he agreed with his US counterpart that Spain join NASA's Artemis project, which aims to set foot on lunar soil again in 2025.

In addition, the agreement between NASA and the new Spanish Space Agency, based in Seville, has been strengthened. Sánchez has not specified what the new collaboration will consist of, although Moncloa sources had announced that this was one of the main objectives of the meeting between the two leaders.

The Artemis II mission, scheduled for November 2024, will take astronauts to Earth's satellite on a 4-day round trip, but they will not touch down. The goal of both the Orion astronaut pilots and the mission is to assess how ready the Artemis program is to send humans to the lunar surface, testing its crew support systems along the way and verifying that the human can safely walk on the Moon again as early as 2025.

The Artemis I mission, carried out by the Orion spacecraft, successfully completed its objective in December after 26 days of travel. The aircraft spent almost a month orbiting the earth's satellite, although the first steps were not easy. The takeoff was initially planned for the end of August, but it was canceled several times due to various failures in the engines and other rocket systems, as well as bad weather conditions.. Even a hurricane endangered the mission and its launch date was delayed.

Later, last April, NASA presented the four astronauts who will crew the Artemis II mission to orbit the Moon.. They will also go on Artemis III, which is expected to land on the moon in 2025, although the date seems too close for some experts.. The four travelers include an African-American man and a woman, in a bid by the space agency to include groups that have never participated in a lunar mission.

Meeting with “great complicity”

Government sources have praised the complicity between the two leaders and are very satisfied with a meeting that lasted 45 minutes. Previously, already sitting in the Oval Office with Biden, Sánchez had praised the US leader: “The world needs a president committed to good fights, like you,” he told him.

In this sense, during the meeting they addressed issues such as the situation in Ukraine, the energy transition, the fight against climate change, artificial intelligence and its impact on democracy, migration and the relations of both countries with Latin America.