Menghe Zhaoru/VCG/Getty Images
The Chang’e-6 probe’s return capsule landed in China on June 25, carrying the world’s first samples collected from the far side of the Moon.
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The Chinese government now has something no other human has ever encountered: rocks and soil from the far side of the moon.
The successful return of the Chang’e-6 lunar mission with its historic cache on June 25 was a scientific coup that further cemented China’s place as one of the world’s greatest space powers, rivaled only by the United States.
And despite growing competition in the global race to establish a permanent human presence on the moon, China’s 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,” Liu Yunfeng, director of the international cooperation office of the China National Space Administration (CNSA), said at a press conference in Beijing on Thursday.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told CNN he was “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 drill and a mechanical arm, include up to 4.5 pounds (2 kilograms) of lunar dust and rocks from an ancient crater on the far side of the moon that is never visible from Earth.
“We will make it available to the international community as we will when we begin to bring back additional samples, and as we did a half-century ago with the samples brought back from the six Apollo moon landings,” Nelson said.
Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo/AFP/Getty Images
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, pictured here at a pre-launch press conference for Boeing’s first manned spacecraft, the Boeing Starliner, on May 3, said he was “pleased” that China intends to share samples from the far side of the moon.
It’s a rare moment of consensus between two space agencies competing to land astronauts on the moon and build a base near the lunar south pole. But U.S. access to the samples could be hampered by a 2011 law known as the Wolf Amendment, which bars NASA from using public funds for bilateral cooperation with China or its agencies without authorization from Congress or the FBI, effectively barring the space agency from working regularly with its Chinese counterpart.
“The root cause of the obstacles to China-U.S. space cooperation lies in U.S. domestic laws, such as the Wolf Amendment, that hinder cooperation between the two countries in space exploration,” Bian Zhigang, vice chairman of the China National Space Administration, said at Thursday’s press conference. “If the U.S. truly wants to engage in normal space exchanges with China, I think it should take concrete measures to remove these obstacles.”
During the Cold War, NASA shared samples collected by Apollo astronauts from the near side of the moon with its rival in the first space race — the former Soviet Union — as well as dozens of other countries, including China, according to a NASA spokeswoman. But samples from the far side of the moon took decades longer to obtain.
China is the only country to have ever successfully soft-landed a robotic spacecraft on the far side of the moon, a feat first achieved in 2019 by the Chang’e-4 mission. A year later, China became the third nation in history to successfully bring back samples from the Earth-facing side of the moon with the Chang’e-5 mission.
China first opened these samples to international scientists last August, and Nelson gave the green light for NASA-funded researchers to request access.
“We are currently going through the process with our scientists and our lawyers to make sure that the instructions and the safeguards that the Chinese are insisting on … are not a violation of the law, of the Wolf Amendment,” Nelson told CNN. “At this point, I don’t see any violation.”
Any similar request to study the Chang’e-6 samples must go through the same screening process, Nelson said. The U.S. space agency “will continue to determine whether NASA-funded scientists and organizations can access the samples in accordance with congressionally imposed restrictions on NASA’s interactions with CNSA.”
China now aims to send astronauts to the moon “before 2030,” while the United States is aiming for “late 2026,” according to Nelson. Despite the recent success of China’s robotic lunar missions, Nelson remains confident that the United States is on track with NASA’s Artemis program to beat Beijing in this second space race to send humans to the moon.
“Spaceflight is hard, but human spaceflight is particularly hard,” Nelson said. “And it’s much harder than a robotic landing.”
NASA currently has the advantage of testing spacecraft capable of carrying humans to the moon. The uncrewed Artemis I mission successfully sent the Orion spacecraft around the moon in 2022, paving the way for the Artemis II mission that will send four astronauts on the same trajectory as early as September 2025. China has yet to fly a spacecraft capable of carrying humans around the moon.
Joel Kowsky/NASA
NASA’s Space Launch System rocket carrying the Orion spacecraft launches on the Artemis I flight on November 16, 2022, from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
NASA has partnered with SpaceX to develop the lunar lander that will carry Orion astronauts to the moon’s surface on the Artemis III mission. The vehicle, called Starship, successfully completed its fourth test flight in June, but there are still several test flights and technology demonstrations left before it can carry people.
China has the advantage when it comes to robotic exploration of the Moon.
The U.S. government hasn’t landed a robotic spacecraft on the moon since 1968, but NASA is currently funding the development of lunar landers by private companies through its Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, program.
Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 lander, also called Odysseus or “Odie,” became the first American-made spacecraft to soft-land on the moon in more than five decades when it reached the lunar surface in February. But another NASA-funded lunar lander, called Peregrine, built by Astrobotic Technologies, failed just hours after liftoff on its maiden voyage in January due to a fuel leak.