The Artemis Accords Are 67 Nations Signing a Rulebook They Did Not Write

NASA is in Lima this week for the fourth Artemis Accords Workshop — the first time the annual gathering has been held in Latin America — and 67 countries will be there. Peru itself signed in May 2024, becoming the 41st nation to join.

The Accords, drafted in 2020 by NASA and the State Department and offered for signature with no formal amendment mechanism, have accumulated more signatories in the past year than any prior period. According to officials familiar with the process, no pathway for signatories to revise the principles has been established — countries sign as written. Seventeen countries joined in the last twelve months alone; six countries signed in just the last two and a half weeks, the fastest streak since the Accords were established. The most recent: Paraguay became the 67th nation on May 7, in Asunción.

Paraguay's accession was not an accident of timing. It followed Latvia, Jordan, Morocco, Malta, and Ireland — a cluster of signings that officials and analysts have explicitly linked to competition with Chinese influence in the Global South and Africa. Mike Gold, president of Redwire Space and a former NASA official who helped develop the Accords, was direct: "It's incredibly important for the Artemis Accords to continue to gain momentum in the Global South and Africa to counter growing Chinese influence." Gold has a financial stake in commercial lunar development; his framing serves interests beyond the diplomatic.

The geographic distribution of signatories tells its own story. Of the 67, 31 are in Europe, 16 in Asia, and 8 in South America. Africa — the primary arena for the geopolitical competition the Accords are said to counter — has 5 signatories. Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Cuba have not signed. Neither have Russia or China.

Paraguay's space program is modest by any measure. Its collaboration with Japan on satellite development and Earth observation is worth $24 million — a figure that illustrates the scale of what Paraguay brings to a coalition that includes the United States, Japan, and the European Space Agency. Whether Paraguay's officials assessed the principles before signing — or whether they joined knowing the terms were set — is not publicly documented. The press release from Asunción did not describe a review process. What is documented is that the $24 million Japan partnership preceded the signing and is not part of the Accords framework.

The Lima workshop arrives at a moment when the Accords are becoming something more than a statement of intent. NASA's Artemis II mission — the first crewed flight around the Moon in more than half a century — flew successfully. The revised Artemis architecture now includes a lunar base and a higher cadence of missions that create actual roles for international partners. The technical standards, docking interfaces, data-sharing protocols, and liability rules being hammered out in workshops like the one in Lima this week will govern how hardware from 67 different countries operates in the same environment. Signatories have agreed to those standards. Non-signatories will not be bound by them.

That outcome has genuine value. A shared rulebook for lunar operations beats a free-for-all on a celestial body with no agreed norms for extraction rights, debris cleanup, or priority access. The Antarctic Treaty analogy has merit: getting governance right before exploitation begins is better than litigating it afterward. What that analogy obscures is the sequencing: the Antarctic Treaty was negotiated among nations with roughly equivalent leverage over the continent. The Artemis Accords were written by the United States and offered to everyone else. Signatories will operate under American standards. Non-signatories — China, Russia — will build to their own.

But the question of whether 67 countries signed a document they helped write, or whether they signed onto a framework designed in Washington and presented for affirmation, is distinct from the question of whether the outcome is desirable. The press coverage of the Accords tends to treat these as the same question. They are not.

What the Accords are not is a treaty. They carry no legal obligation. They remain open for signature indefinitely, with no formal mechanism for signatories to amend the principles. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman described the May 7 signing as "creating opportunities for all Artemis Accords signatories, including Paraguay, to join us on the lunar surface." That description is accurate. It does not say that the terms of participation — the technical requirements, the operational protocols, the rights to extracted resources — were set before most of those signatories were in the room.

The workshop in Lima this week will produce working groups, tabletop exercises, and joint statements. It will be described as international cooperation. That description is not wrong. It is also not complete.