By Bethany Lee | 2025-10-09

Argentina is one of the four countries NASA has selected to fly CubeSats during the Artemis II mission, which in April 2026 will send four astronauts to the moon for the first time in more than half a century.

The Artemis II mission is part of NASA's Artemis program, which ultimately aims to establish a sustainable human presence on the moon and pave the way for future manned missions to Mars.

Although the mission won’t touch down on the moon, the crewed test flight and its associated international satellite missions will be crucial for gaining insights into space science, human health and lunar geography.

The CubeSats will detach from the rocket to study the environment around Earth, as the crew in the spacecraft continue on around the moon, per NASA.

The four astronauts, NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen, will launch on board NASA’s Space Launch Systems (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft Integrity.

CubeSat missions

All four countries deploying satellites on Artemis II -- Argentina, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Germany -- are signatories to the Artemis Accords, a series of non-binding multilateral agreements that set out outer space norms.

And each of the satellites, which will be deployed from the SLS rocket into high-Earth orbit, have their own mission objectives, ranging from studying radiation to optimizing communications from space.

South Korea's K-Rad Cube will study the effects of space radiation on humans and electronic components that will be applied in future deep space missions.

Saudi Arabia's Space Weather CubeSat will seek to to improve understanding of the space environment, astronaut safety and satellite systems by studying space radiation, solar X-rays, solar energetic particles and magnetic fields.

Germany's TACHELES CubeSat will examine the effect of radiation on electrical components for future lunar rovers, in anticipation of the Artemis III moon landing, which is tentatively scheduled for mid-2027.

And Argentina's ATENEA, a 12U class CubeSat type microsatellite developed by the Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP), will validate key technologies for future space missions, Noticia Ambientales reported in June.

This will involve measuring radiation in high orbits, GPS data collection and long-range communication tests, it said.

"Together, these research areas will inform plans for future missions within NASA’s Artemis campaign," NASA said.

ATENEA's mission falls under the auspices of the Sistema Argentino de Radars Especulares (SARE) program of Argentina's National Commission for Space Activities (CONAE), a planned constellation of Earth observation satellites.

UNLP's participation in the Artemis II mission represents a significant advance in science and space technology in Argentina, per Noticia Ambientales, and strengthens international collaboration in the field of space exploration.

Long-standing partnership

Argentina, which signed the Artemis Accords in July 2023, has a long-standing space partnership with the United States, which has seen NASA and CONAE collaborating on Earth observation missions for decades.

The Aquarius/SAC-D mission, launched in June 2011 as a joint venture between NASA and CONAE, was the first mission with the primary goal of measuring sea surface salinity from space.

CONAE also has joined efforts with NASA to form international earth observation constellations, sending its SAC satellite series into the same orbit as the US EO-1 and Terra missions in 2000.

In March this year, the two nations reaffirmed their commitment to the responsible and peaceful use of space, expanding commercial partnerships and advancing space science to benefit life on Earth.

"The United States and Argentina have collaborated for more than six decades on mutually beneficial space activities," the US State Department said in a March 27 statement following the bilateral space consultations.

These range from forging commercial partnerships that strengthen economic prosperity to using groundbreaking space science to improve lives on Earth.

"The United States and Argentina further celebrate the contributions of both nations’ space agencies and private sector companies in realizing shared objectives, looking toward future bilateral space collaboration," it said.