NEW DELHI: One of the most significant geopolitical events in many decades transpired when the United States intervened in the relation-normalising Abraham Accords between Israel and several countries in western Africa and the Arab world. Overall, the relation-normalising process will slowly percolate on numerous fronts, including trade, security, education, health, transportation, science and technology, communications and agriculture. Whatever the case, the positive consequences of the Abraham Accords between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will be a template for other nations normalising or interested in normalising their relations with Israel for the foreseeable future.
Israel and the UAE did not waste much time signing a space cooperation agreement after the Abraham Accords. The UAE Space Agency and the Israel Space Agency used the Expo 2020 Dubai Space Week occasion. Aside from their interest in sharing space-based meteorological and Earth-observation competencies, both nations have agreed to extend the cooperation to lunar exploration. The new partners are also the only countries with lunar ambitions in West Asia, with the UAE preparing to launch its Rashid lunar mission and Israel its Beresheet-2 mission in 2024. The agreement signed also includes a potential collaboration on research and development of scientific payload for the Beresheet-2.
An interesting scheme of events went unnoticed after the signing of the Abraham Accords in 2020, until the UAE-Israel space cooperation agreement. It was only last week—on January 24, 2022—that Israel joined the U.S.-led Artemis Accords, a space cooperation pact led by the United States. The U.S. has signed fourteen other nations to cooperate on robotic and human spaceflight missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond. The UAE was the first West Asian nation to be a party to the U.S.-led agreement, being among the first batch of signatories since October 2020. Israel joined Artemis late and curiously after the signing of the UAE-Israel agreement. This peculiar sequence of events is symbolic of how the two countries pursue their lunar ambitions.
Israel’s space programme goes far back to the early 1960s. Since then, it has primarily focused on building national competencies in dual-use C4ISR (command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) applications. The space programme largely remained committed to Israel’s agriculture, water management and defense purposes. Israeli universities and research institutions plugged themselves into space science R&D with numerous partners worldwide but space exploration never became the primary agenda of the Israel Space Agency.
On the contrary, the UAE space programme is relatively recent. Before establishing the UAE Space Agency in 2014, the emirate availed the services of satellite manufacturers in Europe, the U.S. and South Korea to fulfill its remote sensing and communications needs. Indigenization of space efforts balanced with strategic international partnerships has been a crucial agenda since the establishment of the UAE Space Agency. The UAE is attempting to achieve several missing competencies in one go. It is eager to raise the quality of higher technical education in the country, accommodate new space-tech startups, bring investment opportunities for its state-owned holding companies and create a post-oil high-tech industrial portfolio.
It is easy to comprehend Israeli and Emirati ambitions for the Moon with these backgrounds.
Tel Aviv has left space exploration mainly in the hands of its private sector, as is evident from SpaceIL’s leadership over the Beresheet missions. Israel Space Agency, Israeli Aerospace Industries, large defence contractors like Elbit Systems and medium- and small-scale defence contractors could provide technical support but commercially. This model fits well now as space exploration becomes a commercial enterprise globally. Tel Aviv is quite a hotspot of space-tech investments, given the immense heritage of its defense and computing industries. Numerous space venture capital firms and accelerators—Type5, Starburst, and ST Engineering—have set up offices in Israel in quick succession.
The UAE is taking a top-down approach with the Emirati government and their holding companies making diversified investments in space startups and industries through the national Space Investment Promotion Plan. The government is simultaneously pumping in public-private investments to the tune of $5.5 billion in the space sector, most of it going into capacity building in universities, new space R&D institutions and the space agency. Unlike the brown-field infrastructure of the older space agencies, the greenfield UAE Space Agency is much more agile and geared towards new-generation space business models, including the Moon-focusing construction and operations of commercial space habitats, space-based resource mining, and space tourism.
Almost all of these attributes of UAE and Israeli space plans are congruent with the vision and mission of the Artemis Accords. Artemis, at present, has gathered 15 international partners. The signatories may be the space agencies but the techno-economic sectors of these 15 nations are likely to benefit from the common lunar ambition. But does that put Israel and UAE firmly under the U.S. umbrella? The answer is no.
On January 24, 2022, the China-Israel Joint Committee on Innovation Cooperation met virtually, led by Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and China’s Vice President Wang Qishan. Israel is a major non-NATO ally and has a strong military partnership with the U.S., preventing it from trading dual-use technologies with China. Yet, there is a good demand for Israeli emerging technologies—robotics, food technologies, artificial intelligence, medical technologies—in the Chinese venture capital market. It is to be seen whether the private-capital driven Israeli lunar and planetary exploration ecosystem limits itself to Artemis or gets a foothold into China’s Artemis-like plans or those of others. The same is the case with the UAE. In November 2021, the UAE Space Agency partnered with the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, and Kazhakstan’s Ministry of Digital Development, Innovation, and Aerospace Industry to jointly upgrade the Gagarin Start launch site at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan (primarily operated by Roscosmos). These developments are bound to raise doubts about the presumed supremacy of the Artemis Accords when it comes to the joint-commercial exploration and operations on the Moon.
U.S. interest in the Russia-Ukraine friction could push European nations further away from Washington. Eurasia’s tumultuous geopolitics could have consequences on the long-effective U.S.-Europe space cooperation. Europe will further consolidate its Artemis-like plans as, except Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, Italy and Ukraine, none of the major European economies has signed the Artemis Accords. Instead, they prioritise investments in the European Space Agency-led Deep Space Gateway, a modular space station orbiting the Moon and the Commercial Lunar Mission Support Services program, a European intergovernmental program facilitating infrastructure build-out on the Moon. On the other hand, China is still in talks with Russia to jointly pursue the China-Russia International Lunar Research Station. They too might attract international partners just as the U.S. is doing with the Artemis.
So why is it vital for us in India to analyse these developments? Since the announcement of the Artemis Accords, a naive narrative has been propagated that calls for India to join either the Artemis Accords or other similar partnerships, commit allegiance once and for all. If one analyses Israeli and Emirati techno-political manoeuvres, they are pivoting towards the United States yet exploring newer partnerships outside Artemis Accords to upkeep their national interests. Europe has taken an independent route to the Moon, and China and the U.S. are unlikely to engage each other. India has stayed on the outside so far, seeking to preserve ‘strategic autonomy’ in outer space. But the newly begun Second Space Age is quickly solidifying its manifestation on the Moon. India must move at a quicker pace.
(The author is a space scientist who works at the crossroads of space tech strategy, space diplomacy and Space 2.0. Views expressed in this article are personal)
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