China will allow scientists from six countries, including the United States, will examine the rocks it has collected on the Moon – a scientific collaboration that occurs while the two countries remain locked in a bitter trade war.
Two American institutions funded by NASA had access to the lunar samples taken by the Chang’e-5 mission in 2020, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) announced on Thursday.
CNSA chief Shan Zhongde said the samples were “a treasure shared for all humanity,” said local media.
Chinese researchers have not been able to access NASA moon samples due to the restrictions imposed by American legislators on the collaboration of the space agency with China.
Under the 2011 law, NASA is prohibited from collaboration with China or companies belonging to Chinese unless it is specifically authorized by the Congress.
But John Logsdon, the former director of the Space Policy Institute of the University George Washington, told BBC Newshour that the last exchange of Roches de Moon had “very little to do with politics”.
Although there are controls on space technology, examining lunar samples had “nothing military,” he said.
“It is international cooperation in science that is the norm.”
Washington has imposed Chinese prices from Chinese products that go up to 245%, while Beijing retaliated with 125% prices on American products.
US President Donald Trump previously hinted a de -escalation in the trade war, but Beijing denied that there were negotiations between the two parties.
In 2023, the CNSA appealed to applications to study its Moon Samples Chang’e-5.
What is special in the samples of Moon Chang’e-5 is that “seem to have a billion years of young” that those collected in the Apollo missions, said Dr. Logsdon. “This suggests that volcanic activity continued in the moon more recently than people had thought.”
Spatial officials of the United States and China would have tried to negotiate an exchange of moon samples last year – but it seems that the agreement did not materialize.
In addition to Brown University and Stony Brook University in the United States, other winning offers came from institutions in France, Germany, Japan, Pakistan, the United Kingdom.
Shan, of the CNSA, said that the agency “will maintain an increasingly active and open position” in the exchange and cooperation of international spaces, including along the spatial information corridor under the belt and the Road initiative
“I believe that the circle of friends of China in space will continue to grow,” he said.
