Vice President Kamala Harris and President Emmanuel Macron of France met today at the headquarters of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in Washington, D.C. as part of the State Visit, to highlight the strong U.S.-France partnership in outer space.
This meeting builds on their November 2021 meeting in Paris where they agreed to strengthen space cooperation across all sectors. Since that meeting, France has signed the Artemis Accords to guide civil use of space, the United States has joined the Space for Climate Observatory (SCO) to develop accessible tools for climate monitoring and adaptation, and the United States and France held the first Comprehensive Dialogue on Space to discuss cooperation on civil, commercial, and national security space initiatives. France announced yesterday the same commitment that the Vice President announced in April 2022 not to conduct destructive, direct-ascent anti-satellite missile testing.
The Vice President and President Macron agreed to strengthen U.S.-France space cooperation across civil, commercial, and national security sectors. They received a briefing from French and U.S. experts on climate science, and discussed how to better utilize space data to address the climate crisis. They also discussed expanded participation of the United States in SCO, and the upcoming launch of the U.S.-France Surface Water and Ocean Topography mission that will make the first-ever global survey of Earth's surface water and comprehensively track changes over time.
The Vice President and President Macron also discussed space exploration with U.S. and French astronauts, including the continued importance of a crewed presence in low Earth orbit, including International Space Station operations, and the continued strengthening of joint investments in the exploration of the Moon and Mars.
