https://futurism.com/reason-nasa-scientists-cant-study-china-rocks
The US enacted a law in 2011 that forbids NASA from cooperating with China, which means it may not be able to study the latest Moon rocks.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/17489886
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Earlier this week, China's Chang'e 6 lunar probe landed in Inner Mongolia, delivering the first-ever samples collected from the far side of the Moon.
The mission has the international scientific community excited — the far side of the Moon, which permanently faces away from the Earth, remains mysterious, with only China having touched down on its surface so far.
The controversial piece of legislation has turned into a hot-button topic, with a potential repeal becoming a "political football, tossed between hawkish factions eager to paint China as an emerging adversary in space and less combative advocates wishing to leverage the country’s meteoric rise in that area to benefit the US," as Scientific American wrote in 2021.
"The source of the obstacle in US-China aerospace cooperation is still in the Wolf Amendment," China National Space Administration vice chair Bian Zhigang told reporters this week, as quoted by the Associated Press.
While China has cooperated with a host of countries for its Chang'e 6 mission, the US likely won't be part of the picture as scientists analyze the samples in a lab due to the Wolf Amendment.
In a rare case of US-Chinese cooperation last year, NASA urged scientists to apply to study samples returned by the country's Chang'e 5 mission to the near side of the Moon in 2020.
The original article contains 655 words, the summary contains 218 words. Saved 67%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
i mean like generally there are reasons for the us not cooperating with China for space stuff, just look at where their first stages land and the recent tianlong 3 "static" fire
With scientific data. China is take, take, take, for its own benefit and offers nothing back.
You do know that the whole point of doing science is to evaluate data, right? The only way to get data about a moon rock without studying it themselves would be to get that data from China.
So do you want China to get its way for some reason? Or do you think China would send a fake Moon rock? I honestly don't understand your issue here.
I have no idea what they are trying to say. If China gives America a moon rock, Chinese data on the rock is not really a problem.
I trust scientific data, which, when it comes to Moon rocks, shouldn't be affected by politics in any way. But it does require scientists in multiple countries to evaluate the data. And that should be as many countries with qualified scientists as possible.
So it should be studied by scientists from NASA and the ESA and JAXA and others.
Moon rocks, shouldn't be affected by politics but they clearly are. The US politicises everything. I wouldn't trust them either.
What exactly could they do? This makes no sense. I get the whole idea that the PRC can't be trusted, but do you think they would fake a Moon rock in some way NASA scientists couldn't tell or what?
I meant the US can't be trusted. It doesn't matter what they can or can't do. Cooperating with China over anything is out. The policy is to demonise them at every opportunity.