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China’s government now possesses something no other human being has ever encountered: rocks and soil from China. far side of the moon.
The successful return of Chang’e-6 lunar mission with the historic hiding on June 25 was a scientific coup that further solidified China’s place as one of the world’s greatest space powers, rivaled only by the United States.
And despite heating competition in the global race to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon, China’s space agency is once again following the precedent set by NASA decades ago after the Apollo Missions and sharing its lunar samples with scientists around the world.
“China welcomes scientists from all countries to apply (to study the samples) and share the benefits,” said Liu Yunfeng, director of the international cooperation office of the China National Space Administration (CNSA), during a press conference on Thursday in Beijing.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told CNN he is “pleased to learn that CNSA intends to share” the materials collected by the Chang’e-6 lunar probe last month. The samples, collected with a drill and mechanical arm, include up to 4.4 pounds (2 kilograms) of lunar dust and rocks from an ancient crater on the far side of the Moon, which is never visible to Earth.
“Make it available to the international community, just as we will when we start bringing back additional samples, and as we did half a century ago with the samples brought back from the six Apollo moon landings,” Nelson said.
It’s a rare moment of consensus for two space agencies competing to land astronauts on the Moon and build a base near the lunar south pole. But US access to the samples could be hampered by a 2011 law Known as Wolf Amendmentwhich prohibits NASA’s use of government funds for bilateral cooperation with China or its agencies without authorization from Congress or the Federal Bureau of Investigation, effectively prohibiting the space agency from routinely working with its Chinese counterpart.
“The root cause of obstacles to China-US space cooperation lies in US domestic laws such as the Wolf Amendment, which hinder cooperation between the two countries in space exploration,” said Bian Zhigang, vice president of the China National Space Administration , during Thursday’s press conference. “If the US really wants to engage in normal space exchanges with China, I think it should take concrete steps to remove these obstacles.”
US access to Chang’e-6 samples
During the Cold War, NASA shared samples collected by Apollo astronauts on the near side of the Moon with its rival in the first space race — the former Soviet Union — along with dozens of other countries, including China, according to a spokesperson. NASA voice. But samples from the far side of the Moon took decades longer to obtain.
China is the only country to soft-land a robotic spacecraft on the far side of the Moon, a feat that was first accomplished in 2019 by the country’s Chang’e-4 mission. A year later, China became only the third nation in history to successfully return samples from the Earth-facing side of the Moon with the successful completion of the Chang’e-5 mission.
China opened these samples to international scientists for the first time last August, and Nelson gave NASA-funded researchers the green light to request access.
“We are going through the process now with our scientists and our lawyers to make sure that the instructions and protections that the Chinese are insisting on… are not a violation of the law, the Wolf Amendment,” Nelson told CNN. “To date, I don’t see any violations.”
Any similar application to study Chang’e-6 samples must go through the same verification process, Nelson said. The US space agency “will continue to determine whether NASA-funded scientists and organizations can access samples in accordance with Congressional restrictions on NASA’s interactions with the CNSA.”
Race to the moon
China now intends to land astronauts on the Moon “before 2030”, while the US aims for “the end of 2026”, according to Nelson. Despite the recent success of China’s robotic lunar missions, Nelson remains confident that the US is on the right track with NASA’s Artemis program to beat Beijing in this second space race to land people on the Moon.
“Spaceflight is hard, but human spaceflight is especially hard,” Nelson said. “And magnitudes more difficult than a robotic landing.”
NASA currently has the upper hand in testing spacecraft capable of carrying humans to the Moon. The uncrewed Artemis I mission successfully sent the Orion spacecraft around the Moon in 2022, paving the way for the Artemis II mission to send four astronauts on the same trajectory as early as September 2025. China has yet to fly a human-rated spacecraft around the moon.
NASA has partnered with SpaceX to develop the lunar module that will take astronauts from the Orion spacecraft to the surface of the Moon during the Artemis III Mission. This vehicle, nicknamed Starship, successfully completed its fourth test flight in June, but there are still several test flights and technology demonstrations far from being able to transport people.
China holds the upper hand when it comes to robotic exploration of the moon. O
The U.S. government hasn’t landed a robotic spacecraft on the Moon since 1968, but NASA is currently funding the development of lunar probes by private companies through its Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS program.
Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 lander, also called Odysseus or “Odie,” became the first U.S.-made spacecraft in more than five decades to date. soft earth on the moon when it reached the lunar surface in February. But a different NASA-funded lunar lander called Peregrine, built by Astrobotic Technologies, failed a few hours after takeoff on its maiden voyage in January due to a fuel leak.
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