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Artemis II crew members (L-R) Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Hammock Koch, and Jeremy Hansen meet the media outside the West Wing of the White House in Washington, December 14, 2023. /AP
An international astronaut will join U.S. astronauts on the moon by the decade's end under an agreement announced on Wednesday by NASA and the White House.
The news came as Vice President Kamala Harris convened a meeting in Washington of the National Space Council, the third such gathering under the Biden administration.
There was no mention of who the international moonwalker might be or even what country would be represented. A NASA spokeswoman later said that crews would be assigned closer to the lunar-landing missions, and that no commitments had yet been made to any country.
NASA has included international astronauts on trips to space for decades. Canadian Jeremy Hansen will fly around the moon a year or so from now with three U.S. astronauts.
Another crew would actually land; it would be the first lunar touchdown by astronauts in more than a half-century. That's not likely to occur before 2027, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
All 12 moonwalkers during NASA's Apollo program of the 1960s and 1970s were U.S. citizens. The space agency's new moon exploration program is named Artemis after Apollo's mythological twin sister.
Including international partners "is not only sincerely appreciated, but it is urgently needed in the world today," Hansen told the council.
During Wednesday's meeting, Harris also announced new policies to ensure the safe use of space as more and more private companies and countries aim skyward. Among the issues that the U.S. is looking to resolve: the climate crisis and the growing amount of space junk around Earth.
(With input from AP)