NASA and China Are Sharing Mars Data Being Gathered by Their Spacecraft

March 30 , 2021 (EIRNS)—SpaceNews reports today that this involves sharing orbital details of the new orbiters from China and the U.A.E. to avoid the possibility of collisions. “Most recently,” said Acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk, “we had an exchange of data with them, on them providing their orbital, their ephemeris data, for their Tianwen-1 Mars orbiting mission, so we could do conjunction analysis around Mars with the orbiters.”

The U.S. is allowed to engage in bilateral space cooperation with China under the hateful “Wolf Amendment” with restrictions. In advance of any proposed discussions with China, NASA must certify with the FBI that there is no threat of technology transfer, and that the discussions will not include anyone involved in “human rights violations”!

While having the orbital details of the new spacecraft will protect the American and European spacecraft already in Mars orbit, having access to the weather and other environmental data being collected by the other nations’ spacecraft, would be beneficial to China, when Tianwen-1 attempts to land a small rover on Mars in May or June. Win-win space cooperation.