OREANDA-NEWS. The US administration is preparing a draft new international agreement on the extraction of resources on the moon, to which they plan to connect a number of partner states, which will not include Russia at the first stage. This was reported on Tuesday by Reuters, citing sources familiar with the process of preparing the document.

The project has not yet been submitted to the US allies, but in the next few weeks, Washington plans to officially begin negotiations with countries such as Canada, Japan and the EU, as well as with the United Arab Emirates.

At the same time, according to Reuters sources, Russia will not be among the partners at the initial stage, including due to the position of the Pentagon. The US military, according to these data, is allegedly concerned about the "threatening" maneuvers of Russian satellites, therefore, it is opposed to connecting to the Moscow project.

In the spring of 2019, NASA announced the project of the lunar program Artemis, which will consist of three stages. The first of them - Artemis 1 - provides for an unmanned flight of the Orion spacecraft installed on the Space Launch System rocket around the Moon and its return to Earth, it is planned for the second half of 2020.