Washington should closely monitor the joint activities of Moscow and Beijing in outer space. This opinion was expressed by the director of the American space Agency NASA Bill Nelson on Tuesday, June 15, during the press conference GLEX-2021.
He also called on the United States to implement plans for the moon before Russia and China do so.
"Tomorrow afternoon at this global conference, the plans of Russia and China (for cooperation in space) will be announced. It is interesting to follow this, because, no matter how we cooperate, it will be important for us to deliver the first woman and the first non — white person to the surface of the Moon before our competitors do," the head of the space department shared during his speech to the senators of the US Congress, broadcast on the NASA website.
On the same day, June 15, Roscosmos CEO Dmitry Rogozin announced an agreement with Bill Nelson to hold the first face-to-face talks in the fall.
Earlier, on June 11, Dmitry Rogozin said that the state corporation agrees to cooperate with NASA, subject to the lifting of sanctions. In turn, Bill Nelson, in an interview with Politico, said that the cooperation between the United States and Russia in space is unique and exceptional, it should not stop.
Alexander Gromov, a professor at NUST MISIS, told Izvestia that cooperation between the two countries in space should continue, and it is not advisable to abandon it. In his opinion, this is "better than the Cold War".
At the end of last year, the US Department of Commerce imposed sanctions against 58 Chinese and 45 Russian organizations, but the names of some of them are repeated in the list, which narrows it down to 41 Russian companies, including Roscosmos.
