While forcefully enforcing the "Wolf Clause" that will permanently not cooperate with China, and on the other hand, asking China to provide them with lunar soil samples, the "refined egoism" of the United States is really vividly manifested.
According to the South China Morning Post, quoted by the Observer, US law has long set restrictions on cooperation between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the China National Space Administration. However, according to an internal email in recent local time, NASA has signaled its intention to cooperate with Congress, allowing its funded researchers to apply to study lunar soil samples collected by China's Chang'e-5 in 2020.
In essence, China has already opened the lunar soil samples collected by Chang'e-5 to the international community, and other countries have already rushed to apply because there is no such provision as the "Wolf Clause". And the United States definitely wants it, but because it can't live by its own sin, and there is the "Wolf Clause" pressing, NASA can only pull down its subordinates and apply to the US Congress.
It is worth noting that NASA indicated in an email to colleagues that the application was necessary because China's lunar soil samples were "unique". NASA also said that the "green light" for this application is an exception, which means that the "Wolf Clause" will still come into effect in the future.
In fact, NASA has said more than once that it wants China's Chang'e-5 lunar soil, as early as when our Chang'e-5 lunar exploration was successful and brought back to the lunar soil, the director of NASA couldn't wait to start the moral kidnapping, he said, China should make the lunar soil data public, just like the Apollo program back then.
Not only that, since Bill Nelson became the current director of NASA, he has repeatedly publicly expressed his desire not to cooperate with China.
For example, when Nielsen appeared before the U.S. House of Representatives on June 23, 2021, he urged the Committee on Science, Space and Technology to support NASA's request to increase its fiscal year 2022 budget, and in order to show how sincere he was, he also expressed support for the permanent "Wolf Clause" in the United States.
However, on April 27, 2022, as China's space industry made progress, Nielsen accused China's space industry of "lack of transparency and willingness to cooperate", criticized China with the common saying "it takes two people to dance tango", and claimed that "the United States wants to cooperate with China, but China has not offered to cooperate".
The United States itself put forward the "Wolf Clause" to prevent China from having dealings with NASA, and seeing that China has made progress in aerospace, it also said that why China did not take the initiative to propose cooperation, because China lacked the willingness to cooperate
The United States has really played a good game, and if there is nothing to do, the "Wolf Clause" will be "morally kidnapped" and "given the green light" if there is something. However, some friends may wonder how unique the lunar soil brought back by Chang'e-5 is that NASA lowered its price to ask the U.S. Congress to give the green light
You know, there has been a debate in the aviation industry about whether the moon ended its life 3.5 billion years ago, or it was formed 1 billion years ago. For so many years, there has been no conclusion, and if you want to know the answer, you can only go to a specific lunar region and bring back soil to study, and the lunar soil brought back by Chang'e-5 is the lunar soil of that area.
What's more, Chang'e-5 also has a secret mission, which is to go to the moon to find the ultimate energy source for mankind, helium-3. The reason why it is called the ultimate energy source is that helium-3 can not only be used in various fields such as power generation, cooling, quantum computing, etc., but it can also be used as nuclear fuel without nuclear radiation!
Helium-3 is too critical, and if you can have a lot of helium-3, it will lead to an energy revolution. Unfortunately, there are only 0 helium-3 reserves on Earth5 tons, but the moon has a lot of helium-3, and when you hold a handful of lunar soil in your hand, there is a lot of helium-3 in it.
NASA, of course, also knows how critical Chang'e-5's lunar soil is, so it's no wonder they are so quiet this time.
It is worth noting that China's Chang'e-6 is also scheduled to be launched next year, which will be the first time in human history to go to the far side of the moon to collect lunar soil.
"What we know about the far side of the moon is limited to coming from remotely sensed data," he said. "The samples collected will not only provide basic information about the timing of the largest and oldest known impact basin on the Moon, but will also reveal the composition of the other half of the Moon's crust and possibly even explore deeper mantle material beneath the crust." I wonder if NASA will have to go to Congress again to beg for help at that time