61 nations had signed the Artemis Accords as of January 2026, with Oman the most recent 1. The Accords aim to establish shared norms for lunar operations, including transparency, interoperability, and heritage site protection. But the Coalition is less exclusive than headline numbers suggest. Countries including Thailand and Senegal have also signed onto China and Russia's rival International Lunar Research Station programme. This dual membership is rational hedging: smaller spacefaring nations gain access to both architectures without committing exclusively to either. The governance of the Moon is shaping up as multipolar, not bipolar, with countries choosing access over allegiance.
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Dual Signatories Complicate the Lunar Coalition Picture
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Several Artemis Accords nations have also signed China and Russia's rival framework, revealing a multipolar space governance reality.
ScienceDeveloping
Key takeaway
Nations are signing both Artemis and ILRS frameworks, hedging rather than choosing sides.
Deep Analysis
In plain English
61 countries have signed the Artemis Accords, a US-led agreement setting out rules for how countries should behave on the Moon: being transparent, not blocking others' operations, protecting historic landing sites, and so on. But some of those same 61 countries have also signed up to China and Russia's competing framework, which has different rules and a different vision for who governs lunar activity. This is rational hedging: smaller countries want access to whichever programme succeeds. It also means the US coalition is less unified than the headline number suggests. Countries are not choosing sides; they are keeping options open.
Sources:The Conversation
First Reported In
Update #1 · Artemis II Commits to the Moon With Three Open Questions
The Conversation· 2 Apr 2026
Read original →Different Perspectives
JAXA
JAXA is an Artemis Accords signatory with the Lunar Cruiser rover planned for south-pole surface operations; Chang'e 7's first-arrival timeline compresses the window those surface systems were designed to operate in alongside American crew.
Space Research Institute RAS / Roscosmos
The LILEM instrument on Chang'e 7 gives Russia science-cooperation presence at Shackleton's rim with no independent crewed lunar capability on a public timeline. This is Roscosmos's only confirmed path to south-pole science in the current decade.
CNSA / China Manned Space Agency
Chang'e 7 at Wenchang confirmed a second-half 2026 launch for Shackleton rim, 18 to 24 months before any American crewed arrival. The mission carries a Russian LILEM instrument, giving Roscosmos a south-pole science foothold inside China's programme.
Jeremy Hansen / Canadian Space Agency
Hansen appeared at the 16 April JSC press conference in his only public moment since splashdown. Canada's Canadarm3 remains without a confirmed deployment host after Gateway cancellation, with CSA maintaining institutional silence on the programme's status.
Airbus Defence and Space
Airbus has issued no post-mission ESM performance statement; its press room returned a 404 error on a 14 April check. The only named Airbus engineer quote on the mission appeared in a Nature interview, not a company release.
Daniel Neuenschwander / European Space Agency
ESA's 11 April statement praised ESM translunar injection precision and omitted the pressurisation valve anomaly; the June 2026 Council is the sole stated review forum. ESM-3 is at KSC without a corrected-baseline disclosure to justify its readiness.