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The Chinese government now has something that no one else has ever come across – rocks and soil from the far side of the moon.
The successful return of the Chang’e-6 lunar mission with the historic treasure on June 25 was a scientific achievement that cemented China’s place as one of the world’s leading space powers, rivaled only by the United States.
And despite the competition heating up in the global race to establish a permanent human presence on the moon, the Chinese 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 news conference Thursday in Beijing.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told CNN that he is “pleased to hear that CNSA intends to share the materials collected by the Chang’e-6 lunar probe last month. The samples, collected using a mechanical drill and hand, 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 have never been seen on 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 that two space agencies will compete to land astronauts on the moon and build a base near the moon’s south pole. But US access to the samples could be blocked by a 2011 law known as the Wolf Amendment, which prohibits NASA from using government funds for bilateral cooperation with China or its agencies without authorization from Congress or from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, effectively banning the space agency from working regularly with its Chinese counterpart.
“The root cause of the obstacles to China-US space cooperation lies in the domestic laws of the United States, such as the Wolf Amendment, which hinders cooperation between the two countries in space exploration,” said Bian Zhigang, vice chairman of the National Space Administration of the United States. China, during the news conference on Thursday. “If the US really wants to engage in normal space exchanges with China, I think they should take concrete steps to remove those obstacles.”
US access to Chang’e-6 samples
During the Cold War, NASA shared samples collected by Apollo astronauts from the side of the moon with its rival in the first space race – the former Soviet Union – along with many other countries, including China, according to a NASA spokesman. But it took decades longer to get samples from the side of the moon.
China is the only country ever to make a soft landing of a robotic spacecraft on the far side of the moon, a feat first achieved 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 side of the moon facing Earth with the successful completion of the Chang’e-5 mission.
China opened those samples to international scientists for the first time last August, and Nelson gave the green light for NASA-funded researchers to apply for access.
“We are going through the process right now with our scientists and our lawyers to make sure that the directives and the guardrails that the Chinese are demanding, the Wolf Amendment, are not a violation of the law,” Nelson told CNN. “As of this moment, I don’t see a violation.”
Any similar request to study Chang’e-6 samples must pass the same vetting process, Nelson said. The US space agency will “continue to determine whether NASA-funded scientists and organizations can access the samples in accordance with Congressional restrictions on NASA’s interactions with CNSA.”
Race to the moon
China is now aiming to land astronauts on the moon “before 2030,” while the US is shooting for “the latter part of 2026,” according to Nelson. Despite the recent success of China’s robotic lunar missions, Nelson remains confident that the US is on track with NASA’s Artemis program to beat Beijing in this second space race to land humans on the moon .
“Spaceflight is hard, but spaceflight is especially hard,” Nelson said. “And sizes are more difficult than a robotic landing.”
NASA currently has the advantage in testing spacecraft capable of carrying humans to the moon. The uncrewed Artemis I mission successfully launched the Orion spacecraft around the moon in 2022, paving the way for the Artemis II mission to similarly launch four astronauts as early as September 2025. China still does not have a human-rated spacecraft. all over the world. moon
NASA is partnering with SpaceX to develop the lunar lander that will take astronauts from the Orion spacecraft to the surface of the moon during the Artemis III mission. That vehicle, called Starship, successfully completed its fourth test flight in June but there are still test flights and technology demonstrations that cannot carry people.
China has the edge in robotic lunar exploration. The IS
The US government has not landed a robotic spacecraft on the moon since 1968, but NASA is currently funding lunar landing development by private companies through its Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, program.
Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 lander, known as Odysseus or “Odie,” became the first US spacecraft in more than five decades to make a soft landing on the moon when it reached the lunar surface in February. But another NASA-funded lunar lander called Peregrine, built by Astrobotic Technologies, failed just hours after its maiden voyage in January due to a fuel leak.
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