Do We Need Artemis Accords For Mars Too?
NASAWatch: “With regard to the exploration of Mars: just as the case with the Moon, there is a growing international presense in orbit and on the surface. Indeed the UAE and China joined the Mars club just last week. Just as things are becoming more complex with lunar exploration, wouldn’t the issues of planetary protection, traffic management, communications & science collaboration demonstrate a need for the establishment of good practices on Mars – especially in advance of possible commercial human missions?”
Thomas Zurbuchen: “You are of course correct – that is that the exploration of Mars is one that has many players now – and we’re so excited about the two missions that arrived only days ago. We celebrate all peaceful exploration of outer space – and as especially it is done as individual countries are spending their treasure towards benefiting the science community as a whole. So, we’re really glad for that. It is also true that as we already have a number of spacecraft in orbit around Mars, for example, we have had a number of discussions – bilateral discussions – with the community overall just to make sure that these assets are safe in orbit around Mars. Discussions with the community overall need to focus on the benefit of all players who are in orbit. It is also true with the Artemis Accords, as you said, that they were seeking to create a platform with multiple signees in the international community that were already getting experience from the Moon. It is very much worth thinking about the framework within which we expand go forward – as we would expect given the excitement of Mars – with the multiple players that will still enter the community of Mars Explorers going forward..”
I think a we should do this, and the first step would be to pool international resources and money over something that everyone can need and use – a small constellation of international Mars telecommunications orbiters.
NASA will need a replacement for the MRO later this decade for that purpose, and MAVEN sometime later. Supposedly the plan is to double dip on some aspect of Mars Sample Return and make NeMO the said orbiter.
But we could probably do it sooner, and more ambitious (a small constellation) if we were to internationalize the project. It would make ours and everyone else’s orbital and surface missions less expensive and most of all would provide something of substance in the near term that could be the foundation of a First Mars Accord. Talking about surface exploitation may be meaningful for some missions for a few countries in the longer term, but building, enabling access, standardization and sharing of resources of a telecommunications constellation in Mars orbit would be meaningful to more countries and more missions, and sooner.
I think of it like this: imagine if we and everyone else didn’t have to provide any future orbiters or landers to expensive (both in cost and mass) requirement to communicate directly with Earth, but instead just built them to communicate with an international Mars telecommunications constellation, and as a backup the science-survey orbiters. That’s actual useful international infrastructure building and for the first time ever, on/near another planet. And that’ll be the expressway to a whole lot more of that when we start landing people on the surface and need to discuss (internationally) more infrastructure.
Trust and experience gained in the process of an international Mars orbital telecom network would carry over. So in my view, start there.