A veteran astronaut and former NASA administrator said on December 14, there is a need for the United States to continue its cooperation with China in space exploration, after China’s spacecraft “Chang’e 4” made a historic landing on the dark side of the moon on January 2.
Charles F. Bolden, chief of the space agency from July 2009 to January 2017 said: “China should feel very proud of having accomplished this. Anytime you can do something that has not been done before, it’s a reason for excitement and celebration.”
In an exclusive interview, Bolden said, “I’m incredibly optimistic. I just think cooler heads will prevail,” according to ChinaDaily news reports.
Bolden was only the second astronaut in NASA’s history to hold the position of administrator.
Bolden said: “If this administration went to the Congress and said, ‘Look, we want to relax the stipulations on the Wolf Amendment’ or ‘We want to eliminate the Wolf Amendment’, it could get passed in a heartbeat, and that would remove the restriction and we’d be able to collaborate in human spaceflight.”
When asked Bolden why he has such confidence, he said, “Who thought Nixon would ever go to China?” referring to former US President Richard Nixon’s 1972 historic visit.
US Representative John Culberson has said he was much “hopeful” that Congress would continue to prohibit the NASA from engaging into bilateral cooperation with China until and unless some conditions are met, spacepolicyonline.com has reported on December 7.
Citing cooperation between the US and Russia, Bolden said, “There is no better partnership with Russia than NASA and Roscosmos because we have a common mission.”
“Both nations have the financial wherewithal and the technical expertise to further advance this quest for humanity to go deeper and deeper into space,” he said.
In addition to removing legal constraints, another requirement for US-China space cooperation is for the administration of US President Donald Trump to reinvigorate the US-China space dialogue, Bolden said.
“I think it’s really important for the NASA administrator to speak for the United States, in reaching out to other nations of the world to say, you know, we are with you, we look at this (Chang’e 4 landing) as an achievement of humanity. And we really want to remain partners in this effort,” Bolden said.
Bolden said, “My firm belief is that we should integrate China into the International Space Station program. It doesn’t have a lot of time left,” that would help China “ avoid some of the mistakes that were made with building the International Space Station”.