On April 26, the China University of Geosciences will host a review meeting to review academic institutions that want to borrow lunar scientific research samples collected by Chang'e-5. However, after the list of academic institutions participating in the review meeting was made public, a special applicant, NASA, attracted everyone's attention.
The reason for the outside world's concern is very simple: China has always advocated equal and open cooperation with all countries in the space field, but the United States has an extremely bad "Wolf Clause" that strictly restricts space cooperation between NASA and China. The United States' strict defense of China in the aerospace field has reached a level that borders on pathology.
Academician Wu Weiren, the general director of China's lunar exploration program, once revealed one thing: When Chang'e-2 hoped to detect the Lagrange L2 point and prepare for China's next lunar exploration program, the United States once shut down the orbital data of small celestial bodies that were originally shared by the world, and trampled on the truth advocated by the United States and the West that "science has no borders".
The Chang'e-5 returner carries lunar samples
However, the U.S. Congress, which formulated the "Wolf Clause" back then, never expected that in just over a decade, China would approach or even surpass the United States in the aerospace field. Now, NASA itself is limited by this document.
This time, in order to be on the list of China University of Geosciences, NASA has been constantly reporting to the US Congress since December last year, hoping to bypass the restrictions of the "Wolf Clause" and apply to China for samples collected by the "Chang V". This "tug-of-war" lasted for about half a year. NASA said that applying for samples collected by the Chinese side was necessary and had "unique value".
It is worth noting that NASA is not the only American scientific research institution that has applied for lunar soil in China this time, but also Brown University, the University of Chicago, Purdue University, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. There are 10 institutions applying for lunar soil, and American scientific research institutions account for full half.
NASA
Two things are not hard to see from this list. First, China is truly open and inclusive, and does not look down on the space race advocated by the United States. Second, if there really is a so-called space race between China and the United States, then the United States has already lost at the starting line. The more the Pentagon hypes up China's "space threat theory," the more people it will lose.
The first point is well understood. If China were to engage in a space race, there would never have been such a situation in which American scientific institutions took up half of the application list from the beginning. Since this list has been released, there is a high probability that there will be a US agency that will "win the bid" in the future. This attitude is the same as China's attitude when it built the International Lunar Research Station and the Tiangong space station.
China has never blocked designated countries, as the United States has done. The reason why the United States is not present in these plans is not that China has not opened its door, but that the United States has handcuffed itself to the door. European countries have not been less ideologically "blocking" China, but China-EU cooperation on lunar exploration has been advancing normally so far.
According to the schedule announced in 2023, Chang'e-6, which is expected to be launched this year, will carry the lunar surface negative ion analyzer developed by the European Space Agency and the radon detection payload developed by France. In 2019, when China designed the lunar scientific research station project, it also pulled in the Russian State Space Corporation and the European Space Agency to carry out planning and demonstration work.
Therefore, the space race advocated by American politicians and the military is simply a non-existent concept in China. China also does not look down on the logic of American politicians, which is one or the other. The different attitudes of China and the United States toward the space industry are destined to doom the United States to lag behind China in the pace of space exploration from a long-term perspective.
This brings us to the second point. The "space race" advocated by the United States will inevitably turn into a boomerang and stick to itself in the end. When NASA went to the China University of Geosciences to ask for lunar soil, what were US politicians doing? They were exaggerating the "space threat" of China and Russia and trying to form a gang to deal with China.
China and the United States
On April 2, the U.S. ambassador to Argentina took the lead in "firing guns" on China, claiming that China's deep space exploration station in Neuquén could be "manipulated by the People's Liberation Army" and threaten U.S. national security. On April 9, the commander of the U.S. Space Force made a high-profile statement, saying that China's deep space exploration technology is developing at an "alarming rate" and poses a threat to the United States.
On the same day, NASA also held a press conference, saying that the United States will help Japan achieve its goal of sending a rover to the moon in 2031, promote the "Artemis program", and jointly engage in the so-called "new Cold War" in space. Obviously, US politicians and the military very much want to target China with the posture against the Soviet Union, just as Reagan hyped up "Star Wars" did in the past.
However, the list of applications brought out by the China University of Geosciences, which includes NASA, pierces all the offensive they have carefully planned. Both China and the United States have a clear schedule for lunar exploration, but compared with the Chinese astronauts who are advancing step by step and carefully according to the schedule, this group of American people can be said to be very unreliable.
Project Artemis
This year, the United States has not had any good news in space exploration. On January 8, the U.S. "Peregrine Falcon" lunar lander failed to launch due to a malfunction of the propulsion system and passed by the moon.
On January 9, NASA announced that it would postpone the landing of Artemis 2 on the moon because "major problems" were found in the "battery, exhaust system, temperature control system, valves" and other systems, and the launch of Artemis 3 was also postponed by one year. However, considering that there are too many problematic systems, there is a question mark over whether one year is enough time for NASA to repair and debug.
By February 24, the American "Odysseus" spacecraft finally achieved its first landing on the moon in half a century, but then fell into a state of "lost contact". Later, it was proved that the posture was wrong at the time of landing, resulting in "face to the ground", and after less than a week of operation, it fell into hibernation in a hurry, and did not send back any images and information of research value, and landed on the moon, but not completely.
鹊桥二号
In contrast, China's "Queqiao-2" mission has been a complete success, has completed the on-orbit communication test, and sent back the latest group photos of the Earth and the moon, and NASA has asked China that by 2028, the international lunar research station will be basically formed. There is only four years left for the United States to catch up.
In the aerospace field, it is no longer the United States that blocks China, but the United States "closes itself off" and isolates itself from the world. At present, many countries, from the European Union to Russia, to the United Arab Emirates, Thailand, Pakistan and other countries, have taken action to catch the express train of China's lunar exploration program. On April 8, Turkey, a NATO country, also submitted an application to participate in the Sino-Russian International Lunar Research Station.
China does not engage in a new Cold War, so it doesn't matter whether it wins or loses, it has only one goal, and that is to lead all mankind to space. If the United States continues to cling to the fantasy of "Star Wars" and refuses to give up, then the final result will be to make US space exploration a "self-fulfilling prophecy" and the only loser in the self-directed and self-staged space race.
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