The Artemis Accords are an international agreement first drafted by NASA and the US government that aim towards establishing a framework for civil space activities by civil space agencies regarding...Show moreThe Artemis Accords are an international agreement first drafted by NASA and the US government that aim towards establishing a framework for civil space activities by civil space agencies regarding the Moon, Mars, asteroids and comets. The Accords have been signed by multiple states, in particular those that are willing to play a role in the US-led Artemis Program for renewed human spaceflight to the Moon. The Accords have been controversial among experts in the field of space governance. Experts have claimed that the Artemis Accords do not respect space as a commons and that the Accords have important shortcomings that hamper its ability to facilitate sustainable space governance. Others have primarily criticized the Artemis Accords for the tensions it has increased between the US and states like Russia or the People's Republic of China, as some believe the US are actively trying to influence the governance of space in their favour. Some fear that this can lead to attempts to overtly weaponize space. This research aims to look at both of these criticisms, by first assessing to what extent the Artemis Accords comply with or violate the principles associated with sustainable governance of a commons and looking at the Accords and its contents in detail. Then, the effects this has on the weaponization of space will be considered and discussed in order to better understand how the Artemis Accords are influencing the weaponization of space.Show less
The research collaboration KM3NeT is currently constructing neutrino telescopes at two sites in the Mediterranean Sea. The pointing accuracy of these two telescopes is of high importance to be able...Show moreThe research collaboration KM3NeT is currently constructing neutrino telescopes at two sites in the Mediterranean Sea. The pointing accuracy of these two telescopes is of high importance to be able to trace detected neutrinos back to their cosmic sources. Pointing can be cross checked with the cosmic ray shadow of the moon respectively the sun. In this research first the effects of mispointing of the KM3NeT/ORCA detector on the 2D map of the moon were evaluated. It is shown how various mispointing does in fact distort the 2D-map of a celestial object. Secondly the first six months of data with 4 lines of the KM3NeT/ORCA detector were used to investigate the cosmic ray shadow from both the sun and the moon. Extrapolated simulations for a year show that the statistics are currently not sufficient for a significant deficit of particles in the neighbourhood of the moon and the sun. In the analysis of the ORCA4 data the background of the moon and sun signal was evaluated using fake sources, following the path of the moon and with a given time delay. The background showed significant differences between different fake sources and also could be shown to behave differently for the moon and the sun. Further research is needed to investigate the discovered features and be able to recover the signal from the moon and sun shadowsShow less
