China-US Space War Just Got Uglier

In order to enforce the provisions of a document stopping NASA from engaging in any activities that may put it in contact with the China National Space Administration (CNSA), journalists from China were prevented from participating at space shuttle Endeavour's May 16 launch.

This marks one of the highest points of the crisis currently unfolding between the two nations, as far as collaboration for space purposes goes. The US Congress has barred NASA from all types of interactions with CNSA representatives.

As such, Chinese journalists were not permitted to obtain press credentials for the last launch of shuttle Endeavour, even if this was a major news story. Also worthy to note here is the fact that the $2 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) instrument was partially built by experts in China.

The advanced scientific experiment is the most complex ever sent to space, and represents the result of a large international collaboration. The cost of the particle detector has been estimated at $2 billion.

The Chinese journalists that wanted to cover the event were employed by Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency. This made them government employees in the eyes of the new NASA rules.

Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA) is the primary architect of the law that bars NASA-CNSA collaborations. The Congressman is the chair of a House of Representatives committee that oversees the spending budget of the American space agency.

He is also a strong critic of any sort of collaboration between the United States and China. He believes the there is nothing connecting the two nations, and that the human rights abuses going on in the Asian nation should not be tolerated or validated by such collaborations.

“Chinese journalists were denied the opportunity to make live coverage of the shuttle's blast-off, just as their peers from other countries have done,” a Xinhua editorial in the Wednesday edition of China Daily reads.

“The Chinese journalists were also kept away from NASA's press conferences. Obviously, the 'Wolf Clause' runs counter to the trend that both China and the United States are trying to push ahead their exchanges and cooperation in science and technology,” the piece added.

At this point, analysts can't say how this will influence the relationship between the two countries, who have been pushing for increased communications over the past few years, Daily Galaxy reports.