Peter Klevius continuing analysis of US desperate schizophrenia when facing losing its stolen $-hegemony: $-freeloader (since 1971) US morbid fear mongering produced the evil Wolf Amendment instead of cleaning up US.
When the world's biggest ever embezzler (since 1971) knows its criminal path is ending, it has to choose between surrender or trying to shoot itself to the "freedom" it says it "defends".
There's an Extremely Stupid Reason NASA Scientists Can't Study China's Amazing New Moon Rocks
https://www.yahoo.com/news/theres-extremely-stupid-reason-nasa-140038772.html?guccounter=1
"China welcomes scientists from all countries to apply according to the processes and share in the benefits."
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.
But there's one nation that will be barred from poring over the exceedingly rare samples: the United States.
That's because the US enacted a law called the Wolf Amendment in 2011, which prevents NASA from using government funds to cooperate directly with China.
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. "If the US truly wants to hope to began regular aerospace cooperation, I think they should take the appropriate measures to remove the obstacle."
Chinese officials revealed today that its Chang'e 6 rover returned just shy of two kilograms (4.4 pounds) of samples from the lunar far side. While it's far from being the largest sample to have been returned from the Moon — NASA's Apollo 16 mission returned a whopping 26 pounds of rock in 1972 — it's the first sample taken from the far side of the Moon.
The far side's extremely rocky and crater-filled surface makes it an extremely challenging environment to explore. Its distinctive characteristics have long puzzled scientists.
Now, China's groundbreaking Chang'e 6 mission could finally provide some answers. For one, the samples could shed light on the kind of local resources future space explorers could make use of, including water ice.
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.
However, that doesn't mean China isn't open to the idea.
"China welcomes scientists from all countries to apply according to the processes and share in the benefits," China National Space Administration director of international cooperation Liu Yunfeng told reporters.
The Wolf Amendment, named after former US representative Frank Wolf, prohibits NASA from using government funds to cooperate with the Chinese government — unless it has certification from the FBI that such collaboration poses no threats to national security or risks inadvertently leaking space-related tech or data.
It was designed to pressure China into improving its human rights records, desired changes that experts say haven't materialized over the past 13 years.
Instead, China has made considerable advances, with its space agency sending multiple rovers to the lunar surface over that time, and launching its own space station in less than two years.
But there's still a small chance NASA could help China study its samples from the far side of the Moon. 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.
At the time, the space agency announced it had provided the necessary certifications to Congress to prove there was no risk of transferring tech or data to China.
China is currently in a strong bargaining position. With almost half a dozen successful trips to the lunar surface in recent years, it's outpaced NASA's efforts considerably. The US agency's last trip to the surface of the Moon was over half a century ago — and it still has a long road ahead of it to change that.
History of the Wolf Amendment
In May 1999, the Report of the Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China was made public. It alleged that technical information provided by American commercial satellite manufacturers to China in connection with satellite launches could have been used to improve Chinese intercontinental ballistic missile technology.
In 2010, Rep. John Culberson urged President Barack Obama not to allow further contact between NASA and the China National Space Administration (CNSA). In a letter addressed to the President, he wrote:
I have grave concerns about the nature and goals of China’s space program and strongly oppose any cooperation between NASA and CNSA’s human space flight programs without Congressional authorization.
In April 2011, the 112th United States Congress barred NASA from engaging in bilateral agreements and coordination with China.[1] As stated under Public Law 112–10, Sec. 1340:
(a) None of the funds made available by this division may be used for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration or the Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop, design, plan, promulgate, implement, or execute a bilateral policy, program, order, or contract of any kind to participate, collaborate, or coordinate bilaterally in any way with China or any Chinese-owned company unless such activities are specifically authorized by a law enacted after the date of enactment of this division. (b) The limitation in subsection (a) shall also apply to any funds used to effectuate the hosting of official Chinese visitors at facilities belonging to or utilized by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
In 2013, officials at NASA Ames prohibited Chinese nationals from attending Kepler Science Conference II. A number of American scientists boycotted the meeting, with senior academics either withdrawing individually or pulling out their entire research groups. Rep. Frank Wolf wrote a letter to NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden, saying that the restriction only applied to bilateral meetings and activities between NASA and the Chinese government or Chinese-owned companies, whereas Kepler Science Conference II is a multilateral event.[9] NASA later reversed the ban and admitted a mistake in barring individual Chinese nationals who did not represent their government in official capacity.
During China's 2019 Chang'e 4 mission, NASA collaborated with China to monitor the moon lander and Yutu 2 rover on the lunar far-side using NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. NASA was able to do so by getting congressional approval for the specific interaction and sharing data with researchers globally. NASA stated:
The statutory prohibition on NASA’s use of appropriated funds for bilateral cooperation with China…does not apply to activities that NASA has certified to Congress, [which] do not pose a risk of resulting in the transfer of technology, data or other information with national security or economic security implications to China; and that do not involve knowing interactions with officials who have been determined by the U.S. to have direct involvement with violations of human rights. In accordance with the law, NASA made the appropriate certification to Congress for this activity.
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