ESA signs Cooperation Agreement with Mexico
ESA and the Mexican space agency, Agencia Espacial Mexicana (AEM) signed a Cooperation Agreement on 14 February 2023. The objective of this agreement is to allow Mexico and ESA to create a framework for more-intensive cooperation in joint projects in the future.
The agreement was signed at AEM premises in Mexico City by Eric Morel de Westgaver, ESA Director European, Legal and International Matters, and Salvador Landeros Ayala, General Director of AEM, in the presence of Rogelio Jimenez, Mexican Sub Secretary of Infrastructure, Communications and Transportation.
During ESA’s visit, several meetings were organised, including a meeting with the Latin American and Caribbean Space Agency (ALCE) representative, Ambassador Gustavo Alonso Cabrera Rodríguez as well as a visit to the Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica (INAOE) at Puebla, Mexico. The ESA Delegation began identifying future projects in education, Earth observation and integrated applications with Mexican entities.
Since its creation in 2010, the AEM, a decentralised institution of the Mexican Federal Government currently under the responsibility of the Secretariat of Infrastructure, Communications and Transportation, has been in regular contact with ESA.
In the last five years, AEM and ESA relations have intensified. Several meetings, exchanges, training and space application projects were conducted together. These concrete projects addressed domains such as Earth observation (for example, capacity building, monitoring of Sargassum algae devastating the Mexican coast) and integrated applications (participation in the ESA TransparentSea project, contributing to the sustainable management of fishery resources worldwide by supporting fishery certification issuers, in enforcing the value and credibility of certified seafood products using space-based technologies).
ESA experts and European doctors participated for several years in Mexican congresses sharing European telemedicine experience with astronaut training. In navigation, ESA also installed a GNSS sensor station in Santiago de Querétaro in February 2019 and shares data with AEM.
Mexico and AEM are playing an important role for the development of space activities in the region, in particular the setting up of the ALCE organisation with Argentina. ESA is looking forward to developing new joint activities with Mexican space entities.