Space Diplomacy – U.S., China open unprecedented discussions on cooperation

Courtesy of Aviation Week & Space Technology and Aviationnow.com

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin will open potentially historic talks in Beijing this week on U.S. Chinese space cooperation. But Griffin must “thread the political needle” between a tough Bush administration policy on China and Chinese military secrecy and communist bureaucracy already disarming U.S. interest in manned flight collaboration.

As with the Soviet Union in the 1970s, the U.S. space program is being used by the White House and State Dept. as a diplomatic vehicle to open better relations with a potential adversary.

For that very reason, there are concerns in the Bush administration about how far the U.S. should go in space cooperation with China even as the unprecedented talks begin in Beijing.

“There are still lots of differing opinions in Washington about whether we are going too slow or too fast,” says a senior NASA manager, speaking on background. “We are feeling our way, not wanting to get in front of the process.” That process is inherently bound to the White House and State Dept.

These concerns are not shared by the European Space Agency, France and several other nations, including Pakistan and Iran, that already have cooperative space projects with the Chinese.

“We have never had any significant discussions with China about space,” says Griffin. “This will be a get acquainted session. To characterize it as anything more than that would create expectations that could possibly be embarrassing to the U.S.— or embarrassing to China.”

It is still to be determined whether Griffin’s team will have enough time to visit the Great Wall of China. But the U.S. team members said they will definitely raise concerns about the wall of secrecy that surrounds even civilian Chinese space efforts. NASA cannot cooperate with secret space programs.

The six member NASA group head ed by Griffin will meet with top Chinese space managers and view facilities in Beijing Sept. 24-25, then fly to the Jiuquan launch site in the Gobi Desert Sept. 26. They will then visit at least one Shanghai facility and meet other Chinese space managers there Sept 27-28.

Griffin is to report some of his assessments on China to top international space managers at the International Astronautical Conference (IAC) meeting in Valencia, Spain, next week.

In addition to Griffin, the NASA China team members include William Gerstenmaier, who heads Space Operations; Mike O’Brien, who heads NASA inter national relations as assistant administrator for external affairs; and astronaut Shannon Lucid, who has flown five space shuttle missions and spent six months on Mir. Lucid, the daughter of missionary parents, was born in Shanghai and detained there as a child by the Japanese during World War II. She was freed and left the city with her parents, but she and her family returned for a time after the war.

Joint work with the Chinese on unmanned lunar mission science and operations could be one outcome of the talks, say senior NASA managers. There has already been some informal lunar collaboration in multilateral meetings with several countries.

The U.S. and China have common interests in new lunar exploration. One key Griffin objective will be to hear directly from the Chinese government what its specific near term lunar robotic and far term robotic and manned lunar plans are.

China’s first of possibly two Chang’e lunar orbiters is set for launch in 2007, while a lunar rover is set for around 2010-12, followed by a possible robotic sample return mission in 2015-17. China has no specific manned lunar plans, but imbedded in the Change’e unmanned mission insignia are a pair of footprints (AW&ST May 23, 2005 p. 37).

The Chinese are also slowly advancing in planetary flight. They have a small instrument on the Russian lander to be launched to the Martian moon Phobos, and Chinese scientists are also interested in launching missions to comets and asteroids.

But Earth atmospheric and geodetic studies and space debris prevention are other areas of potential U.S. Chinese cooperation that are more likely to come about earlier, NASA officials said. The Chinese have multiple Earth science related missions underway (AW&ST Nov. 12, 2001, p. 56).

Potential Chinese collaboration on the International Space Station has not even been discussed at NASA and some station partners, like Japan, would be cool to Chinese involvement under any circumstances. Managers going on the trip say any Chinese interest in cooperation with the ISS program will be a non starter because the Chinese manned pro gram is dominated by the military and the ISS is well advanced with a 15coun try team.

The dual use civil and military technologies involved in manned flight also make cooperation difficult for the U.S., NASA team members say. The Shenzhou manned program is managed by China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), an unacceptable bedfellow to NASA (AW&ST Oct. 20, 2003, p. 22).

Even so, this moment is analogous to the initial U.S. Soviet meetings 35 years ago that led to the 1975 Apollo Soyuz Test Project and current integrated U.S. Russian manned space operations. Today’s level of Russian cooperation seemed as unthinkable then as ambitious cooperation with China does now. The NASA delegation requested and is being granted a visit to the Jiuquan launch site which, like Cape Canaveral, is a civil/military facility that also launches manned flights.

NASA is being granted access to every site it requested, including the Chinese Academy of Space Technology (CAST), the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Satellite Meteorological Center in Beijing. The delegation is also visiting a CAST locale in Shanghai where they may see a facility that has a wall sized mural of a proposed Chinese space station. A 20ton Salyut class station is the initial goal of the manned program beyond Shenzhou test flights.

NASA did not request a visit to the Beijing Chinese astronaut training center and the separate new Beijing Aero space Command and Control Center that functions as Shenzhou Mission Control. Although these have been often pictured publicly by the Chinese, NASA left both off its request list so as not to raise hopes for manned flight collaboration. Also both sites are run by the PLA. However, the Chinese could surprise NASA and take the Griffin team to one or both facilities anyway.

Talks on unmanned Earth and planetary science, including unmanned lunar project cooperation will form a more like y nexus for early cooperation, senior NASA managers believe. Such unmanned cooperation with the then Soviet Union was substantitive, with good data exchanged on U.S. and Soviet unmanned missions to Venus and other science activities. “We want to use this visit to look for and maybe consider opportunities where we could work together,” Griffin says.

Neither side has presented the other with a “wish list” of talking points and no “joint statement” on cooperation is planned at the end of the talks. In early U.S. Soviet space talks, the two sides’ space programs were similarly developed, but there is no such parity between China and the U.S. China does have a maturing program across all space program sectors, how ever. One recent indication of that is the Sept. 13 launch from the southern Xi chang launch site of a Long March 3A that carried the Chinese built Zhong xing 22A communications satellite into geosynchronous orbit. The Chinese also have major new oxygen/hydrogen booster developments underway (AW&ST Nov. 12, 2001 p. 54).

China stands to benefit more than the U.S. from any significant cooperation, and the White House and State Dept. are wary about NASA being “used” by the Chinese at a time when the Bush ad ministration has many concerns about Chinese missile proliferation, human rights and trade practices.

For example, the U.S. financial assets of Great Wall Industries, China’s international representative for commercial space products, were frozen recently because it had allegedly sold missile technology to Iran (AW&ST June 26, p. 24).

“It would not surprise us if some of these issues were raised by our Chinese counterparts,” says one NASA manager. The Chinese will be told to take such topics up with the White House or State Dept., but not NASA, he says.

China’s lack of openness in both its civil/scientific and manned pro grams is a concern to NASA. “Transparency” is on NASA’s internal list of objectives for the trip. “We want to encourage greater transparency between us and them in our mutual space program plans,” says a NASA manager.

In effect, China has two major space agencies. The PLA runs the Shenzhou manned program, along with normal military space activities such as reconnaissance, while civil/scientific projects are run by the China National Space Administration (CNSA), whose administrator, Sun Laiyan, will host the NASA visitors.

“By definition we are going to tell them that everything [NASA is] doing is an open book and there is nothing that goes on in this agency that is not public knowledge,” the NASA manager says. “But I am not sure that is the case for even the Chinese civil space agency.”.

In fact, the Chinese have gradually be gun to close off outside access to much of their space program that could show true development capabilities. The CNSA declined visa requests to any U.S. media seeking to cover the Griffin trip. NASA public affairs managers argued for more openness with their Chinese counterparts before Griffin departed— and they will raise that again during his visit this week.

Official Chinese interest in U.S. manned flight cooperation has been raised strongly in the past. In 2001, Luan Enjie, then head of CNSA told Aviation Week in Beijing that “without China’s participation, the International Space Station is not a true international pro gram” (AW&ST Nov. 12, 2001, p. 52). Luan then asked that this writer and an other journalist to convey to then NASA Administrator Dan Goldin the desire for U. S. Chinese meetings to discuss Chinese ISS participation. Goldin said at the time the Bush administration would not support such cooperation.

Since then, Luan has become head of China’s lunar program and the Bush ad ministration has shifted policy on China (AW&ST Jan 31, 2005 p. 27).

“Things have obviously changed in the last year, going from [no visits] to being asked by the President to go if invited—and we are going,” the senior NASA official says. “So we have softened our stance a little bit, government to government.” Officials say existing multilateral forums in which both the U.S. and China participate could form the basis for more bilateraeration. Those include:

• Lunar forums: The U.S., China, India and other countries are al ready holding informal discussions on lunar mission radio spectrum issues designed to avoid radio interference between future lunar missions. China has also informally participated in some exploration workshops involving more than a dozen countries exchanging views on lunar and planetary cooperation.
• Earth observation: The Committee of Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) counts both China and the U.S. among it membership devoted to coordination of civilian remote sensing activities. The two countries’ participation in CEOS could form the basis for more direct Earth science cooperation, including weather and climate studies and broadening of Earth geodynamics collaboration already underway.