General Stephan Whiting, the head of the U.S. Space Force, noted at the 2024 Space Symposium in Colorado Springs on April 9 that China had reached out to the U.S. side twice in the last few months on the issue of space safety. “We think that is very positive and we would like to continue to build on that,” Whiting told reporters after his keynote. Whiting indicated that the United States had routinely shared data on potential orbit collisions without any response from Beijing, but that now something had changed. He said that Washington “would love to have a regular path to share safety data” with Beijing.
Last year, China had provided U.S. researchers with Moon rock from their recent retrieval mission, also breaking the deadlock in relations in the space field between the two countries. Whiting furthermore admitted that China’s military space abilities are growing at a “breathtaking pace.” The same thing is occurring in their civilian manned space program. While President Biden has promised that the first non-American to set foot on the Moon would be from Japan, that may well not be the case, given the rapidly developing Chinese-Russian program for an international lunar exploration station.
