The Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA) hopes to have an agreement with its Russian counterpart.

"We're also talking with the Russian space agency Roscosmos, hoping to have an agreement pretty soon," PhilSA Director General Joel Marciano Jr. said in a virtual presser on Monday.

"I guess with regards to this agreement it is really about expanding our space capabilities and capacity in the country through first and foremost people to people exchanges and education," he said.

"Once we train our people then we can now first address these concerns like maritime domain awareness and we can train our universities, we can train government institutions on how to interpret data and use data for various purposes including maritime domain awareness," he added.

Marciano said PhilSA is also talking space agencies of other countries like the United Arab Emirates and Argentina for possible cooperation.

"In terms of international bilateral I guess exploratory discussions, we have met with the UAE, United Arab Emirates. There was a courtesy call by the (Charge d'affaires) recently in the Philippine Space Agency...", he said.

"We have also recently met with the embassy of Argentina in the Philippines and they have a very formidable space program through their space agency CONAE, also there was a meeting with the Hungary..., Hungary is curious, they do not have space agency but their industrial activities related to space are very mature...," he added.

On June 11, PhilSA signed a Memorandum of Cooperation (MOC) with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in a virtual signing ceremony between Marciano and JAXA President Yamakawa Hiroshi.

According to PhilSA "the MOC seeks to explore opportunities for collaboration in the areas of Space Applications; Satellite Development; Space Environment Utilization; Capacity building for space related technology development, space policy and legislation, Space science and space exploration, and; Promotion of space industry."

The agency also signed a space cooperation agreement with the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) early June 4. Robina Asido/DMS