The US may be at odds with China over issues such as weapons proliferation, trade practices and human rights, but this week could mark a turning point in relations between the two countries in space.
As New 杏吧原创 went to press, NASA chief Mike Griffin was in the midst of the first official visit to China by a serving head of the agency. Though Griffin has been at pains to keep expectations realistic for his visit to Beijing, Shanghai and the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre, officials expect discussions to be wide-ranging.
The visit comes as NASA is attempting to transform its human space flight programme. Today, this is dominated by the task of building the International Space Station using the ageing and outdated space shuttle. Under Griffin, NASA is preparing a new generation of launchers and spacecraft with a long-term goal of returning to the moon.
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This experience makes China keen to partner with the US. The country has a only toehold in space with just two human space flights under its belt. Its plans, though, are as grand as any NASA has conjured up and include a space station of its own and astronauts on the moon.
China has already successfully collaborated with Russia, which provided the technology and training for its human spaceflight programme. In 2003, China became just the third nation in history to put a human into orbit. Earlier this month, Russia and China also agreed to cooperate on lunar exploration.
鈥淣ASA鈥檚 chief has a reputation for a hard-line approach to space security issues, a particularly thorny area for China鈥�
The NASA chief may be harder to win over, however. A former senior manager in the US Defense Department鈥檚 so-called 鈥淪tar Wars鈥� programme of the late 1980s and early 90s, Griffin has a reputation for a hard-line approach to space security issues, a particularly thorny area for China, which cloaks its space programme in a shroud of military secrecy.
鈥淐hina accepted a US offer to provide space tracking services to help its second crewed space mission avoid orbital debris鈥�
鈥淭hey respect Mike Griffin because he is a space professional,鈥� says Joan Johnson-Freese, a space policy expert at the National Security Decision Making Department of the Naval War College in Rhode Island. Whether that will lead to the kind of collaborations both sides want is harder to fathom. In the past, collaboration has been on a small scale. Last year, for example, China accepted a US offer to provide space tracking services to help China鈥檚 second crewed space mission, Shenzhou 6, avoid orbital debris.
Further partnerships are also likely to be small-scale to start with, says Johnson-Freese. They might involve remote sensing, environmental monitoring, space science, and maybe astronaut rescue services, she says. Analysts believe China has its eye on more ambitious projects, though.
China will be well aware of the way the US and Russia built their current partnership in space, for example. NASA broke the cold-war ice with the Soviet Union with an Apollo-Soyuz orbital link-up in 1975. The current partnership over the International Space Station began in 1994, when a cosmonaut was included on a space shuttle flight, and the shuttle was used to fly guest US astronauts, equipment and supplies to the Russian space station Mir. Privately, NASA officials say that they would not be surprised were China to propose something similar.
The idea may also have occurred to NASA, which has quietly modified the design of its Orion capsule 鈥� NASA鈥檚 shuttle replacement for trips to space stations and the moon 鈥� to make it technically possible for it to link with Chinese spacecraft. For its part, NASA might welcome some help; with the space station to finish, little money for research and a lunar programme to launch, the next few years won鈥檛 be plain sailing for the agency.
It鈥檚 early days yet, though. 鈥淲e are doing everything we can to make sure that nobody believes that there are real high expectations,鈥� Griffin told employees at the Kennedy Space Center last week. 鈥淭his is a get-acquainted trip.鈥�
