There's an Extremely Stupid Reason NASA Scientists Can't Study China's Amazing New Moon Rocks

Deceptichum , 1 day ago

Hardly stupid, China cannot be trusted.

FlyingSquid , 1 day ago

With a Moon rock? What are they going to do, put a spy camera in it?

Deceptichum , 1 day ago

With scientific data. China is take, take, take, for its own benefit and offers nothing back.

FlyingSquid , 1 day ago

You do know that the whole point of doing science is to evaluate data, right? The only way to get data about a moon rock without studying it themselves would be to get that data from China.

So do you want China to get its way for some reason? Or do you think China would send a fake Moon rock? I honestly don’t understand your issue here.

andrewta , 1 day ago

That wasn’t even close to what he said

FlyingSquid , 1 day ago

I have no idea what they are trying to say. If China gives America a moon rock, Chinese data on the rock is not really a problem.

doodledup , 1 day ago

As a European, I don’t trust the USA either. Maybe even less so.

FlyingSquid , 1 day ago

I trust scientific data, which, when it comes to Moon rocks, shouldn’t be affected by politics in any way. But it does require scientists in multiple countries to evaluate the data. And that should be as many countries with qualified scientists as possible.

So it should be studied by scientists from NASA and the ESA and JAXA and others.

wurzelgummidge , 1 day ago

Moon rocks, shouldn’t be affected by politics but they clearly are. The US politicises everything. I wouldn’t trust them either.

FlyingSquid , 1 day ago

What exactly could they do? This makes no sense. I get the whole idea that the PRC can’t be trusted, but do you think they would fake a Moon rock in some way NASA scientists couldn’t tell or what?

wurzelgummidge , 23 hours ago

I meant the US can’t be trusted. It doesn’t matter what they can or can’t do. Cooperating with China over anything is out. The policy is to demonise them at every opportunity.

FlyingSquid , 23 hours ago

Okay, but this is about science, not politics.

demonsword , 1 day ago

China cannot be trusted

just about as much as the USA cannot be trusted too

autotldr Bot , 1 day ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

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Earlier this week, China’s Chang’e 6 lunar probe landed in Inner Mongolia, delivering the first-ever samples collected from the far side of the Moon.

The mission has the international scientific community excited — the far side of the Moon, which permanently faces away from the Earth, remains mysterious, with only China having touched down on its surface so far.

The controversial piece of legislation has turned into a hot-button topic, with a potential repeal becoming a “political football, tossed between hawkish factions eager to paint China as an emerging adversary in space and less combative advocates wishing to leverage the country’s meteoric rise in that area to benefit the US,” as Scientific American wrote in 2021.

“The source of the obstacle in US-China aerospace cooperation is still in the Wolf Amendment,” China National Space Administration vice chair Bian Zhigang told reporters this week, as quoted by the Associated Press.

While China has cooperated with a host of countries for its Chang’e 6 mission, the US likely won’t be part of the picture as scientists analyze the samples in a lab due to the Wolf Amendment.

In a rare case of US-Chinese cooperation last year, NASA urged scientists to apply to study samples returned by the country’s Chang’e 5 mission to the near side of the Moon in 2020.

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