Candidates standing in the Isle of Man’s general election have been sent letters asking them to back the island signing up to an international space treaty.<\/p>\n
The Manx chapter of the Mars Society wants the island to become a signatory to the Artemis Accords, the framework for peaceful, transparent space exploration now backed by more than 70 nations, including the UK as a founding member.<\/p>\n
The accords, launched by Nasa in 2020, are non-binding and require no parliamentary ratification, membership fee or financial contribution to sign.<\/p>\n
Chapter leader Stuart Mullan said it was a “low-risk, high-visibility way” for the island to show ambition around space projects.<\/p>\n
“Signing the Artemis Accords costs nothing and commits us to nothing beyond principles we already stand for,” said Mullan. <\/p>\n
“Joining the accords would put us on the map internationally and gives a real boost to the case for developing more STEM [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics] projects on the island.”<\/p>\n
The Isle of Man’s Space Registry handles satellite filings for some major space operators.<\/p>\n
“Nobody is suggesting the Isle of Man starts launching rockets,” Mullan continued. <\/p>\n
“All we ask is that candidates consider promoting the Isle of Man as an attractive base for STEM companies and businesses, the kind that bring skilled, well-paid jobs the Island badly needs right now.<\/p>\n
“The space sector globally needs the same things the Island already provides for aircraft and shipping.<\/p>\n
“Finance, legal services, tax expertise, insurance, and regulatory know-how. It would be a strange decision not to look seriously at whether the Isle of Man can capture a share of an industry that’s growing this fast. We think it can.”<\/p>\n
Elon Musk’s Space X company operates a satellite ground station on the island while satellite giants including SES, Inmarsat, Avanti and Telesat have all registered spacecraft through the Isle of Man’s filing system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Candidates standing in the Isle of Man’s general election have been sent letters asking them to back the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":760691,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-760690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-science","tag-space","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=760690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/760691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=760690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=760690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=760690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}