The successful launch of Chang'e-6, once successful, will become the world's first country to land on the back of the moon to report and return, this time, China has also extended an olive branch to the world, can carry other countries' payloads to the moon together.
You must know that the back of the moon is far more valuable than the front of the moon, the back of the moon is almost all craters/craters (97.5%), much more than the front side (69%), the cause of formation and the current situation are only theoretical explanations, lack of field verification; the far side of the moon has the most primitive geological region closer to the moon, perhaps leaving the most primitive components of the lunar mantle, retaining the deepest secrets of the moon; theoretically, the environment on the far side of the moon is more likely to produce helium, and this energy source will change the world.
It is precisely because of these reasons that the United States very much wants to land on the far side of the moon, but it has failed, and so far, only Chang'e-4 has successfully landed on the far side of the moon, and for this reason, the United States has also specially asked China: first, it hopes that it can use China's relay satellite to land on the far side of the moon; second, it hopes to install a US beacon on China's Chang'e-4 spacecraft, which will help NASA accurately find the landing position when it lands on the far side of the moon; and third, it hopes that the Chinese side will provide NASA with a picture of the dust raised on the back of the moon.
China agreed to a third request from the United States, providing data on the dust on the back of the moon, but the first two requests were not. In the end, Chang'e-6 carried four national payloads and satellite projects, including France's radon gas detector, ESA's negative ion detector, Italy's laser angle mirror, and Pakistan's CubeSat. The lunar surface negative ion analyzer will carry out in-situ backscatter and sputtering negative ion detection on the lunar surface, and carry out basic research on planetary science.
It can be said that with the cooperation with China, ESA will have the data on the far side of the moon before the United States, but we must know that before ESA and China cooperated on the moon landing, it just tore up the cooperation agreement with China on manned space station and spaceflight.
In 2014, the European Space Agency and the China Manned Space Engineering Office signed the "2015-2020 China-EU Space Cooperation Outline", which clearly defined cooperation in the fields of deep space exploration, space science, earth observation, tracking and control services, space debris, education and training, and in 2015, China and the EU signed an agreement on cooperation in the field of manned spaceflight, making it clear that China and the EU will participate in each other's astronaut training activities. And in 2019, China and ESA continued to clarify their cooperation with the mainland on Chang'e-6.
At the beginning of 2023, the head of the European Space Agency, Josef Aschbach, publicly stated that there are currently no plans to send European astronauts to the newly completed Tiangong space station in China, and that the agency has neither the budget nor the political intention to send its astronauts to the Chinese space station.
ESA's tearing up of the agreement can be said to be a very irresponsible performance, you must know that the first batch of cooperation projects on China's space station involve ESA in 5 projects.
After the ESA tore up the cooperation agreement with China on manned space station, it continued to cooperate on the moon landing, which has to be said to be a kind of chicken thief, because the value of the return of lunar samples is very significant, and Europe does not have the ability to carry out the moon landing mission independently, so if it misses China, it can only wait for the United States, which is far away.
So why does China continue to cooperate with ESA? This is because ESA has helped China a lot in the lunar mission, and ESA has been carrying out a number of in-depth cooperation with China in the Chang'e-1, 2, and 3 projects. From the very beginning, ESA provided the launch orbit parameter correction for Chang'e-1 and Chang'e-2, and when Chang'e-3 was launched, ESA not only provided guidance for the orbit parameters, but also used its radio telescopes deployed in Spain and Australia to provide signal guidance for Chang'e-3 to accurately enter the orbit around the moon and complete the precise landing of the lunar module on the moon.
When Chang'e-4 and Chang'e-5 were launched, ESA was still providing them with various assistance services, and the reason why ESA tore up the cooperation agreement with China on manned space stations was also due to pressure from the United States, which did not allow Europe to have too much contact with China in the space field.
Therefore, there is no need for China to anger ESA, and it has invited many countries with a high interest in the moon to participate. In fact, this not only fully reflects China's broad mind, but also reflects China's original intention of inviting more like-minded partners to jointly explore the moon and the mysteries of the universe. In addition, it can also effectively weaken the influence of the United States in the space field, because compared with the hegemonic United States, China, which is willing to cooperate and win-win, is obviously better to deal with.