On the 4th of July, China celebrated its taikonauts’ first-ever space walk outside the country’s first permanent space station, the Tiangong (“Heavenly Palace”). The extravehicular activity marked yet another major step for the country’s ambitious space program, and a vivid sign of what is to come. In the next five years, China intends to collect samples from a near-Earth asteroid, conduct two lunar polar exploration missions, and finish construction of its 60-ton space station.
This remarkable growth has led to a spate of recent international space cooperation programs with China, including European Space Agency and taikonauts training together and a reported 42 applications of interest for joint research programs. Some are urging the U.S. and China to collaborate in space as a means to dampen great power tension, though the Wolf Amendment has since 2011 effectively barred NASA from such cooperation. Read More…
