French President Emmanuel Macron’s US tour starts, meets Kamala Harris at NASA headquarters

New Delhi: French President Emmanuel Macron met US Vice President Kamala Harris at the headquarters of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in Washington. During the meeting, he discussed “space exploration and the continued strengthening of joint investments in the exploration of the Moon and Mars” with Harris.

As per the statement released by the White House, “Macron is currently on an official visit to US. Both Macron and Harris agreed on strengthening US-France space cooperation across civil, commercial, and national security sectors.”

This meeting was done on the backdrop of the November 2021 meeting which took place in Paris. As per the statement, “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” since that meeting took place.

Vice President, in April 2022, had announced not to conduct destructive, direct-ascent anti-satellite missile testing. France announced yesterday the same promise. In the meeting, the expanded participation of the United States in SCO and the upcoming launch of the US-France Surface Water and Ocean Topography mission was also discussed.

Macron, after he reached the US, tweeted, "USA! A moment to celebrate the friendship between our two countries. A moment to progress together in a time of great challenges."

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, during an interview with Christiane Amanpour of CNN,  said, "And do we have differences on certain things? Of course. We always do, but we always work through them. And so, for example, when it comes to some concerns that we`ve heard in Europe over some of the provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act that go to creating incentives for investing in the United States - we`ve heard some concerns expressed by our European partners - we immediately set up a task force with the European Union to work through those concerns, and that`s exactly what we`re doing."