NASA and South Korea have forged a deal to cooperate on civil space and aeronautics activities.

The agreement doesn’t detail specific space programs they will conduct jointly, but rather is an agreement to negotiate those arrangements.

Michael F. O’Brien, NASA assistant administrator for external relations, and Munki Lee, the South Korean Ministry of Education, Science and Technology director-general for big science, inked the deal.

The two agencies agree to conduct discussions to identify new cooperative activities related to space exploration, Earth science, planetary science, human space flight and aeronautics research.

The fundamental goal of these discussions will be to advance the interests of both nations through cooperation in space and aeronautics programs, NASA stated. A joint report is expected in eight months.

Discussions are intended to explore a wide range of potential cooperative efforts, including exchange of research data and analysis, potential contributions of scientific instruments and hardware to support future missions, and collaborative exploration architecture planning.

Those talks also may include the International Lunar Network, an ongoing multilateral initiative to establish a robotic network on the surface of the moon; the Global Exploration Strategy, a dialogue involving fourteen international space agencies for enhanced international cooperation in space exploration; and the International Space Exploration Coordination Group, a multilateral effort to coordinate space exploration activities among government space agencies.