NASA is upset about being excluded from China’s Chang’e-6 Moon mission, which is sharing lunar samples with other countries like Italy, France, and Pakistan. The issue stems from the U.S. Wolf Amendment, which restricts NASA from collaborating with China on space projects. To receive the samples, the U.S. needs to lift these restrictions, but China is in no hurry to accommodate. Adding to the tension, NASA’s promise to return to the Moon by 2026, ahead of China’s 2030 goal, makes cooperation even more challenging. The unfolding space race drama raises questions about international collaboration and competition in lunar exploration.

As reported by CNN, the Chinese government now has something no other human has ever seen: rocks and soil from the far side of the moon.

The successful return of the Chang’e-6 lunar mission with the historic cargo on June 25 was a scientific coup that cemented China’s status as one of the world’s leading space powers, second only to the United States.

And, amid increased competition in the worldwide race to create a permanent human presence on the moon, China’s space agency is once again following NASA’s lead established decades ago after the Apollo missions by sharing lunar samples with scientists across the world.

“China welcomes scientists from all countries to apply (to study the samples) and share in the benefits,” said Liu Yunfeng, director of the China National Space Administration’s (CNSA) international cooperation office, at a press briefing in Beijing on Thursday.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told CNN that he is “pleased to hear CNSA intends to share” the materials gathered by the Chang’e-6 lunar probe last month. The samples, obtained with a drill and a mechanical arm, contain up to 4.4 pounds (2 kilograms) of lunar dust and rocks from an old crater on the moon’s far side that is never visible from Earth.

“Make it available to the international community just as we will when we start bringing additional samples back, and as we did half a century ago with the samples brought back from the six Apollo moon landings,” Nelson said.

It is a rare moment of agreement between two space organizations racing to land astronauts on the moon and establish a station near the lunar south pole. However, US access to the samples may be hampered by the Wolf Amendment, a 2011 law that prohibits NASA from using government funds for bilateral cooperation with China or its agencies without prior authorization from Congress or the Federal Bureau of Investigation, effectively prohibiting the space agency from routinely working with its Chinese counterparts.

“The root cause of obstacles to China-US space cooperation lies in US domestic laws, such as the Wolf Amendment, which hinder cooperation between the two countries in space exploration,” said Bian Zhigang, vice chair of the China National Space Administration, during the Thursday news conference. “If the US truly wishes to engage in normal space exchanges with China, I think they should take concrete measures to remove these obstacles.”

US access to Chang’e-6 samples

During the Cold War, NASA shared samples collected by Apollo astronauts from the moon’s near side with its adversary in the first space race, the former Soviet Union, as well as dozens of other countries, including China, according to a NASA spokesperson. However, samples from the moon’s far side have taken decades longer to obtain.

China is the only country to have made a soft landing of a robotic spacecraft on the far side of the moon, which it did in 2019 with the Chang’e-4 mission. A year later, with the successful completion of the Chang’e-5 mission, China became only the third nation in history to successfully return samples from the moon’s side facing Earth.

China gave such samples to international scientists for the first time last August, and Nelson has permitted NASA-funded researchers to seek access.

“We are going through the process right now with our scientists and our lawyers to make sure that the instructions and guardrails that the Chinese are insisting on … are not a violation of the law, the Wolf Amendment,” Nelson told CNN. “As of this moment, I don’t see a violation.”

Any similar application to investigate the Chang’e-6 samples must go through the same vetting process, Nelson added. The Pentagon’s space program “will continue to determine whether NASA-funded scientists and organizations can access the samples by Congressional restrictions on NASA interactions with CNSA.”

Race to the moon

According to Nelson, China now intends to place astronauts on the moon “before 2030,” whereas the United States plans to do so “later in 2026.” Despite China’s recent success with robotic lunar missions, Nelson remains sure that the United States, through NASA’s Artemis program, will beat Beijing in the second space race to place people on the moon.

“Spaceflight is hard, but human spaceflight is especially hard,” Nelson said. “And magnitudes more difficult than a robotic landing.”

NASA currently has an advantage in testing spacecraft capable of transporting humans to the moon. The uncrewed Artemis I mission successfully sent the Orion spacecraft around the moon in 2022, setting the way for the Artemis II mission, which will transport four humans on the same course as early as September 2025. China has yet to send a human-rated spaceship around the Moon.

NASA has teamed with SpaceX to create the lunar lander that will transport people from the Orion spacecraft to the moon’s surface during the Artemis III mission. That spacecraft, known as Starship, completed its fourth test flight in June, but it is still several test flights and technological demos away from being capable of carrying humans.

China has an advantage in the robotic exploration of the moon. Although the US government has not landed a robotic spacecraft on the moon since 1968, NASA is currently paying private companies to construct lunar landers through its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.

Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 lander, commonly known as Odysseus or “Odie,” soft-landed on the moon in February, becoming the first US-made spacecraft to do so in more than five decades. However, a different NASA-funded lunar lander, Peregrine, manufactured by Astrobotic Technologies, failed mere hours after taking off on its first mission in January owing to a fuel leak.

Recently, GreatGameIndia reported that China’s Chang’e-6 successfully landed on the moon’s far side to collect samples, marking China’s fourth lunar landing and the second on the moon’s far side, according to state media reports.