China's Chang'e-5 has collected 1,731 grams of lunar samples, which has become the object of scramble for scientists from all over the world. In line with the original intention of promoting international scientific cooperation, the mainland also hopes to share these lunar soils with other countries. On April 12, the mainland held the first international loan review meeting for the Chang'e-5 mission in Wuhan. A total of 10 foreign scientists, from the United States, Europe and Asia, were evaluated for borrowing lunar soil. Surprisingly, five of them were Americans, accounting for half of the total number of applications, while the other five were from the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Pakistan and Japan.
This situation has indeed exceeded our expectations, and Sino-US space cooperation has been in a state of basic stagnation for more than a decade, and the responsibility lies with the US side: they issued the infamous "Wolf Clause" in 2011, which completely blocked the door for cooperation between the US space community and China. So why do so many American scientists want to get China's lunar soil, and aren't they afraid of violating the Wolf Clause? Should we give it?
It can only be said that the lunar soil brought back by Chang'e-5 is too attractive, not only American scientists, but even NASA, which is the focus of Wolf's clause, has repeatedly said that it wants to get Chinese lunar soil. Since 1969, the Apollo program has carried out six manned lunar landings and collected 381.7 kilograms of lunar samples, including lunar rock and lunar soil, which is 200 times more than the amount collected by Chang'e-5. Why do Americans still want to get China's lunar soil so much?
This is due to the different points where the samples were collected, and the landing site chosen by Chang'e-5 has special significance in the history of lunar geology compared to the Apollo moon landing site. It is located in the Moon Sea region in the northeastern part of the Storm Ocean on the Moon, near the Rumke volcano, with a latitude and longitude of 51.916°W and 43.058°N. Compared to the sampling sites of previous Apollo spacecraft and Soviet unmanned lunar landers, it has higher latitudes and is characterized by younger lunar volcanism.
Here we have to mention the oolong incident caused by the United States. After the Apollo moon landing, scientists analyzed the lunar rock samples and showed that even the youngest samples should have cooled the moon's inner core three billion years ago. However, the Lumke volcano in the northern part of the Moon's frontal storm ocean continued to erupt more than two billion years ago, contradicting lunar samples collected by NASA.
The history of volcanic eruptions on the moon is beyond question, so the problem naturally lies with the samples collected in the United States. This incident fully shows that the American samples have cooled down much longer and does not represent the entire history of the inner activity of the moon. And the sampling site of Chang'e-5, which happens to be near the Lumke volcano, retains the youngest volcanic activity on the moon.
Of course, this is not a coincidence, but the result of careful selection by mainland scientists, and the samples collected here contain richer lunar geological information, which can better reflect the process of lunar evolution, and is naturally more precious. Through isotope dating analysis, researchers found that the Chang'e-5 basalt samples were 2.03 billion years old, nearly 900 million years younger than the samples brought back by Apollo and Soviet lunar missions.
The samples for Chang'e-5 are mainly composed of the following materials: basalt cuttings, mineral chips, breccia chips, cements, and glass. Among them, local substances dominate, and foreign substances do not exceed 5-10%. There are also tiny glasses in the lunar soil, most of which are formed by meteorite impacts. The researchers also found a new phosphate mineral, Chang'e, in the samples, which belongs to the meteorite family of meteorite sodium, which has never been found anywhere else.
Since the Chang'e-5 sample is so precious, it is no wonder that the United States is so concerned. Even though the "Wolf Clause" has always been there, NASA has uncharacteristically said that it does not care, and even the five American scientists who applied for a loan sample have not had a simple background, they are Ryan Ziegler, the curator of NASA's Apollo mission samples, Stephen Parman, a planetary scientist at Brown University, Timothy Groch of Stony Brook University, Stephen Sutton of the University of Chicago, and Michelle Thompson of Purdue University.
All five scientists have received research grants from NASA, and some of them have even led multimillion-dollar NASA-funded projects. Under the Wolf Clause, these people are unlikely to cooperate with China's space sector.
Here we will explain the "Wolf Clause", which was proposed by Frank Wolff, chairman of the Subcommittee on Business, Justice, Science and Related Institutions of the US House Appropriations Committee, specifically prohibiting any joint scientific research activities between the United States and China related to NASA or coordinated by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, including prohibiting all NASA facilities from receiving "official Chinese visitors". In 2011, the U.S. Congress passed the Wolf Clause.
Wolfe is a veteran anti-China person, and he proposed this clause because he borrowed one thing to play it. In 2011, when a Chinese working at NASA's Langley Research Center was arrested while returning to China for a layover, Wolf speculated to the media that the Chinese citizen was carrying "a lot of information technology that he may not have the power to control." However, in the end, no evidence was found, and finally he said that there was a "pornographic movie" on his computer.
But Wolf successfully used the impact of this incident to propose the far-reaching Wolf Clause, which was passed. The original intention of this clause is to prevent China from acquiring advanced U.S. space technology by prohibiting Sino-US space cooperation, thereby slowing down the development of China's space industry. Since 2011, the development of the mainland's aerospace industry has not been affected at all, but has advanced by leaps and bounds, with manned spacecraft completing many missions, space stations also going into space, and the Mars exploration and Chang'e lunar exploration projects have borne fruit, which has made Americans blush.
Obviously, the "Wolf Clause" failed to stop the development of China's aerospace industry, but it limited the hands and feet of the Americans, and the effect was counterproductive. In fact, decades of history have proven that any attempt to shackle China's technological development through restrictions or embargoes ends in bankruptcy. Chinese are backbone, the more you blockade, the more active our independent innovation will be, two bombs and one star is an example.
Now that the Chang'e-5 lunar sample is sought after by NASA, why can't they take the "Wolf Clause" seriously? The reason is that all U.S. legislation is for the U.S., and when cooperation is not good for the U.S., they can use the ban as an excuse to close the door. But when cooperation is beneficial to the United States, they can also forcibly interpret the ban, which makes sense anyway.
For example, NASA first emphasized that the ban on the Wolf Clause was still in effect, and then said that the application for Chang'e-5 samples did not conflict with the ban. To this end, NASA also wrote a letter to the U.S. Congress to explain its views, and also said that the purpose of applying for samples is to allow U.S. researchers to have the same scientific research opportunities as scientists around the world. I have to say that this explanation is really quite contradictory and brain-burning, and ordinary people can't turn this corner.
In fact, if the Americans really want to circumvent the "Wolf Clause", they still have many tricks, such as insisting that the study of China's lunar soil has not been funded by NASA or the US government, and of course, they can also apply to the US Congress for special approval, because the "Wolf Clause" also leaves a gap, and some exceptions can be approved in the form of special legislation.
Let's leave aside how the Americans are trying to overturn their own ban, let's talk about whether China should give samples to these American scientists. Mr. Ren Ma felt that it should still be given, because no matter what the US Congress does, the mainland has always advocated international cooperation, which reflects our demeanor as a great power. All American researchers should not be deprived of the opportunity to study China's lunar soil because of the instigation of some anti-China villains.
On the other hand, scientists in Europe and the United States actually communicate with each other, and even if we don't approve the application of the Americans, we always have to approve the application of other countries. It is also difficult to say whether the Americans will run over to study the lunar soil in the name of communication.
In addition, in 1978, the United States gave China 1 gram of lunar soil, and now if American scientists are allowed to borrow lunar soil, it will show the mainland's open-mindedness and magnanimity, which will be in contrast to those villains in the US Congress, and will be very beneficial to enhancing the mainland's image in the world's scientific research community.