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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 the historical reserve on June 25 was a scientific achievement that further cemented China’s position as one of the world’s leading space powers, surpassed only by the United States.
And despite increasing competition in the global race to establish a permanent human presence on the moon, the Chinese space agency is once again following the example set by NASA decades ago after the Apollo missions and sharing its lunar samples with scientists around the world.
“China invites scientists from all countries to apply (to study the samples) and share in the benefits,” Liu Yunfeng, director of the China National Space Administration (CNSA) International Cooperation Office, said at a press conference in Beijing on Thursday.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told CNN he was “pleased to hear that CNSA plans to share” the materials collected by the Chang’e-6 lunar probe last month. The samples, collected using a drill and mechanical arm, included up to 4.4 pounds (2 kilograms) of lunar dust and rocks from an ancient crater on the far side of the moon, which is never visible to Earth.
“Make it available to the international community, just as we will do as we bring 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 for 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 prohibits NASA from using government funds for bilateral cooperation with China or its agencies without approval from Congress or the Federal Bureau of Investigation, effectively banning the space agency from routinely working with its Chinese counterpart.
“The root cause of obstacles to China-US space cooperation lies in US domestic laws such as the Wolf Amendment, which hamper 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 US really wants to establish normal space exchanges with China, I believe it should take concrete measures to remove these obstacles.”
US Access to Chang’e-6 Samples
During the Cold War, NASA shared samples collected by Apollo astronauts from the near side of the moon with its rival in the early space race — the former Soviet Union — and dozens of other countries, including China, a NASA spokeswoman said. But samples from the far side of the moon have taken decades longer to obtain.
China is the only country to ever soft-land a robotic spacecraft on the far side of the moon, a feat first accomplished in 2019 by the country’s Chang’e-4 mission. A year later, China became only the third country in history to successfully bring back samples from the Earth-facing side of the moon with the successful completion of the Chang’e-5 mission.
China first opened these samples to international scientists last August, and Nelson has given the NASA-funded researchers the green light to apply for access.
“We are now in the process with our scientists and our lawyers to ensure that the instructions and the measures that the Chinese are pushing for … do not violate the law, the Wolf Amendment,” Nelson told CNN. “At this point, I do not see a violation.”
Any similar request to study the Chang’e-6 samples would have to go through the same screening process, Nelson said. The U.S. space agency “will continue to determine whether NASA-funded scientists and organizations can have access to the samples in accordance with Congressional restrictions on NASA interactions with CNSA.”
Race to the moon
China is now aiming to land astronauts on the moon “before 2030,” while the U.S. is aiming for “the latter part of 2026,” Nelson said. Despite the recent success of China’s robotic missions to the moon, Nelson remains confident the U.S. is on track with NASA’s Artemis program to beat Beijing to the moon in this second space race.
“Space travel is hard, but human space travel is extra hard,” Nelson said. “And much harder than a robot landing.”
NASA currently has the lead in testing spacecraft capable of taking humans to the moon. The unmanned Artemis I mission successfully sent the Orion spacecraft around the moon in 2022, paving the way for the Artemis II mission to send four astronauts on the same orbit as early as September 2025. China has yet to fly a human-qualified spacecraft around the moon.
NASA has partnered with SpaceX to develop the lunar lander that will carry astronauts from the Orion spacecraft to the moon’s surface during the Artemis III mission. That vehicle, called Starship, successfully completed its fourth test flight in June, but will require multiple more test flights and technology demonstrations before it can carry humans.
China has the advantage when it comes to robotic exploration of the moon.
The U.S. government has not landed a robotic spacecraft on the moon since 1968, but NASA is currently funding the development of lunar landers by private companies through the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.
Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 lander, also called Odysseus or “Odie,” became the first U.S. 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 and built by Astrobotic Technologies, failed just hours after launch on its maiden voyage in January due to a fuel leak.
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